Though, it can't have been recently since APPARENTLY the two Twilight stars just spent the night together!
Unless, of course, the email is what caused the reunion!?!
Sources said:
“[Kristen] wasn’t happy…that Rob’s been dating other girls so soon after they split. She told him he was cheapening everything they’d had between them.”
WHOA! So she decides to send him an angry email?? Why not just call him up and tell him? Or… you know… move on… since you guys are broken up?
Just sayin'!!
Other sources, however, are reporting that all of these reunion rumors are "not true" which makes us wonder what is ACTUALLY happening!
These two are so up and down we can barely keep up!
FILE - In this April 30, 2013 file photo, Michael Skakel leaves the courtroom after the conclusion of trial regarding his legal representation at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn. A Connecticut judge on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, granted a new trial for Skakel, ruling his attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was convicted in 2002 of killing his neighbor in 1975. (AP Photo/The Greenwich Time, Jason Rearick, Pool, File)
FILE - In this April 30, 2013 file photo, Michael Skakel leaves the courtroom after the conclusion of trial regarding his legal representation at State Superior Court in Vernon, Conn. A Connecticut judge on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, granted a new trial for Skakel, ruling his attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was convicted in 2002 of killing his neighbor in 1975. (AP Photo/The Greenwich Time, Jason Rearick, Pool, File)
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel was granted a new trial on Wednesday by a Connecticut judge who ruled his attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was convicted in 2002 of killing his neighbor in 1975.
The ruling by Judge Thomas Bishop marked a dramatic reversal after years of unsuccessful appeals by Skakel, the 53-year-old nephew of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy. Skakel is serving 20 years to life.
Bridgeport State's Attorney John Smriga said prosecutors will appeal the decision.
Skakel's current attorney, Hubert Santos, said he expects to file a motion for bail on Thursday. If a judge approves it, Skakel could then post bond and be released from prison.
"We're very, very thrilled," Santos said. "I always felt that Michael was innocent."
Skakel argued his trial attorney, Michael Sherman, was negligent in defending him when he was convicted in the golf club bludgeoning of Martha Moxley when they were 15 in wealthy Greenwich.
Prosecutors contended Sherman's efforts far exceeded standards and that the verdict was based on compelling evidence against Skakel.
John Moxley, the victim's brother, said the ruling took him and his family by surprise and they hope the state wins an appeal.
"Having been in the courtroom during the trial, there were a lot of things that Mickey Sherman did very cleverly," Moxley said about Skakel's trial lawyer. "But the evidence was against him. And when the evidence is against you, there's almost nothing you can do.
"I don't care if it was Perry Mason," Moxley said. "The state had the evidence. It was his own words and deeds that led to the conviction."
In his ruling, the judge wrote that defense in such a case requires attention to detail, an energetic investigation and a coherent plan of defense.
"Trial counsel's failures in each of these areas of representation were significant and, ultimately, fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense," Bishop wrote. "As a consequence of trial counsel's failures as stated, the state procured a judgment of conviction that lacks reliability."
Among other issues, the judge wrote that the defense could have focused more on Skakel's brother, Thomas, who was an early suspect in the case because he was the last person seen with Moxley. Had Sherman done so, "there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different," the judge wrote.
During a state trial in April on the appeal, Skakel took the stand and blasted Sherman's handling of the case, portraying him as an overly confident lawyer having fun and basking in the limelight while making fundamental mistakes from poor jury picks to failing to track down key witnesses.
Santos argued that the prosecutors' case rested entirely on two witnesses of dubious credibility who came forward with stories of confessions after 20 years and the announcement of a reward. Skakel had an alibi, he said.
Santos contends Sherman was "too enamored with the media attention to focus on the defense." Sherman told criminal defense attorneys at a seminar in Las Vegas six months before the trial that one of his goals in representing Skakel was to have a "good time," Santos said.
Sherman has said he did all he could to prevent Skakel's conviction and denied he was distracted by media attention in the high-profile case.
Santos contends Sherman failed to obtain or present evidence against earlier suspects, failed to sufficiently challenge the state's star witness and other testimony and made risky jury picks including a police officer.
Prosecutors countered that Sherman spent thousands of hours preparing the defense, challenged the state on large and small legal issues, consulted experts and was assisted by some of the state's top lawyers. Sherman attacked the state's evidence, presented an alibi and pointed the finger at an earlier suspect, prosecutors said.
"This strategy failed not because of any fault of Sherman's, but because of the strength of the state's case," prosecutor Susann Gill wrote in court papers.
The state's case included three confessions and nearly a dozen incriminating statements by Skakel over the years, Gill said. She also said there was strong evidence of motive.
"His drug-addled mental state, coupled with the infuriating knowledge that his hated brother Tommy had a sexual liaison with Martha, and the fact that Martha spurned his advances, triggered the rage which led him to beat her to death with a golf club," Gill wrote.
Gill said what Sherman did with his personal time was irrelevant. She said the evidence cited by the defense was not significant and that Sherman had sound strategic reasons for his decisions.
Skakel, who maintains his innocence, was denied parole last year and was told he would not be eligible again to be considered for release for five years.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House of Representatives Republicans remain committed to seeking a delay in the provision in President Barack Obama's health care law that requires uninsured Americans to purchase health insurance coverage, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said on Wednesday.
House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, speaking with reporters, said Republicans would use their oversight powers, including holding hearings, to hold the Obama administration accountable over the health care law known as "Obamacare."
Induced pluripotent stem cells reveal differences between humans and great apes
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
23-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kat Kearney kkearney@salk.edu 619-296-8466 Salk Institute
Key differences in the regulation of jumping genes may have arisen relatively recently in evolution
LA JOLLA, CA---- Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have, for the first time, taken chimpanzee and bonobo skin cells and turned them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a type of cell that has the ability to form any other cell or tissue in the body.
Mouse iPSCs were created in 2006 by Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University in Japan, and human iPSCs soon followed----feats which earned Yamanaka the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine last year. Now scientists regularly use iPSCs to model diseases using cells that would be otherwise difficult to obtain from a living person or animal. By adding a combination of four key factors, a skin cell can be made into an iPSC, which can then be coaxed into forming liver, lung and brain cells in a culture dish.
It's now possible to not only model disease using the cells, but also to compare iPSCs from humans to those of our closest living relatives----great apes, with which we share a majority of genes----for insight into what molecular and cellular features make us human.
"Comparing human, chimpanzee and bonobo cells can give us clues to understand biological processes, such as infection, diseases, brain evolution, adaptation or genetic diversity," says senior research associate Iigo Narvaiza, who led the study with senior staff scientist Carol Marchetto at the Salk Institute in La Jolla. "Until now, the sources for chimpanzee and bonobo cells were limited to postmortem tissue or blood. Now you could generate neurons, for example, from the three different species and compare them to test hypotheses."
In the new study, published online October 23 in the journal Nature, scientists found disparities in the regulation of jumping genes or transposons----DNA elements that can copy and paste themselves into spots throughout the genome----between humans and non-human primate cells. Jumping genes provide a means to rapidly shuffle DNA and might be shaping the evolution of our genomes, the scientists say.
Working in the lab of Salk's Fred Gage, the Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Disease, Narvaiza, Marchetto and their colleagues identified genes that are differentially expressed between iPSCs from humans and both chimpanzees and bonobos.
To the group's surprise, two of those genes code for proteins that restrict a jumping gene called long interspersed element-1or L1, for short. Compared with non-human primate cells, human iPSCs expressed higher levels of these restrictors, called APOBEC3B and PIWIL2. "We weren't expecting that," Marchetto says. "Those genes caught our eyes, so they were the first targets we focused on."
L1 and a handful of other jumping genes are abundant throughout our genomes. Where these bits of DNA insert themselves is hard to predict, and they can produce variable effects. For example, they might completely disrupt genes, modulate them, or cause them to be processed into entirely new proteins.
Using L1 tagged with a fluorescent marker, the group observed higher numbers of fluorescent iPSCs from non-human primates compared with humans. In separate experiments, they produced iPSCs with too much or too little APOBEC3B and PIWIL2, finding----as expected----that an excess of the two proteins dampened the mobility and reduced the appearance of newly inserted DNA in the non-human primate cells.
These results suggested that L1 elements insert themselves less often throughout our genomes. Indeed, looking at genomes of humans and chimpanzees that had already been sequenced, the researchers found that the primates had more copies of L1 sequences than did humans.
The question that remains is, what would be the impact of differences in L1 regulation? "It could mean that we have gone, as humans, through one or more bottlenecks in evolution, that decrease the variability present in our genome," says Marchetto, though the hypothesis is admittedly hard to prove. It is known, however, that humans' genomes are less variable than chimpanzees'.
The new study provides proof of concept that the iPSC technology can be used to understand some of the evolutionary differences between humans and non-human primates, says Narvaiza. The group plans to make technology, and all the data, available to the broader research community----which is especially helpful now that great ape research is severely restricted in the United States and abroad----so that other scientists can learn about primates using non-invasive, ethically sound methods.
The team plans to differentiate the stem cells into other tissues, such as neurons, and comparing how the cells from different species behave. They will also use the iPSC technology to investigate how chimpanzees might differ from people in susceptibility to cancer, genetic diseases and viral infection.
###
Other researchers on the study were Ahmet Denli, Christopher Benner, Thomas Lazzarini, and Apu Paquola of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies; Jason Nathanson
and Gene Yeo of the University of California San Diego,
Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine; Keval Desai of the University of California San Diego, Division of Biological Sciences; Roberto Herai and Alysson Muotri of the University of California San Diego, School of Medicine; Matthew Weitzman of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine; and senior and corresponding author Fred H. Gage of the Salk Institute and Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny.
The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the G. Harold & Leila Y. Mathers Foundation and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.
About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the world's preeminent basic research institutions, where internationally renowned faculty probe fundamental life science questions in a unique, collaborative, and creative environment. Focused both on discovery and on mentoring future generations of researchers, Salk scientists make groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer's, diabetes and infectious diseases by studying neuroscience, genetics, cell and plant biology, and related disciplines.
Faculty achievements have been recognized with numerous honors, including Nobel Prizes and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1960 by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, M.D., the Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark.
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Induced pluripotent stem cells reveal differences between humans and great apes
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
23-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kat Kearney kkearney@salk.edu 619-296-8466 Salk Institute
Key differences in the regulation of jumping genes may have arisen relatively recently in evolution
LA JOLLA, CA---- Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have, for the first time, taken chimpanzee and bonobo skin cells and turned them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a type of cell that has the ability to form any other cell or tissue in the body.
Mouse iPSCs were created in 2006 by Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University in Japan, and human iPSCs soon followed----feats which earned Yamanaka the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine last year. Now scientists regularly use iPSCs to model diseases using cells that would be otherwise difficult to obtain from a living person or animal. By adding a combination of four key factors, a skin cell can be made into an iPSC, which can then be coaxed into forming liver, lung and brain cells in a culture dish.
It's now possible to not only model disease using the cells, but also to compare iPSCs from humans to those of our closest living relatives----great apes, with which we share a majority of genes----for insight into what molecular and cellular features make us human.
"Comparing human, chimpanzee and bonobo cells can give us clues to understand biological processes, such as infection, diseases, brain evolution, adaptation or genetic diversity," says senior research associate Iigo Narvaiza, who led the study with senior staff scientist Carol Marchetto at the Salk Institute in La Jolla. "Until now, the sources for chimpanzee and bonobo cells were limited to postmortem tissue or blood. Now you could generate neurons, for example, from the three different species and compare them to test hypotheses."
In the new study, published online October 23 in the journal Nature, scientists found disparities in the regulation of jumping genes or transposons----DNA elements that can copy and paste themselves into spots throughout the genome----between humans and non-human primate cells. Jumping genes provide a means to rapidly shuffle DNA and might be shaping the evolution of our genomes, the scientists say.
Working in the lab of Salk's Fred Gage, the Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Disease, Narvaiza, Marchetto and their colleagues identified genes that are differentially expressed between iPSCs from humans and both chimpanzees and bonobos.
To the group's surprise, two of those genes code for proteins that restrict a jumping gene called long interspersed element-1or L1, for short. Compared with non-human primate cells, human iPSCs expressed higher levels of these restrictors, called APOBEC3B and PIWIL2. "We weren't expecting that," Marchetto says. "Those genes caught our eyes, so they were the first targets we focused on."
L1 and a handful of other jumping genes are abundant throughout our genomes. Where these bits of DNA insert themselves is hard to predict, and they can produce variable effects. For example, they might completely disrupt genes, modulate them, or cause them to be processed into entirely new proteins.
Using L1 tagged with a fluorescent marker, the group observed higher numbers of fluorescent iPSCs from non-human primates compared with humans. In separate experiments, they produced iPSCs with too much or too little APOBEC3B and PIWIL2, finding----as expected----that an excess of the two proteins dampened the mobility and reduced the appearance of newly inserted DNA in the non-human primate cells.
These results suggested that L1 elements insert themselves less often throughout our genomes. Indeed, looking at genomes of humans and chimpanzees that had already been sequenced, the researchers found that the primates had more copies of L1 sequences than did humans.
The question that remains is, what would be the impact of differences in L1 regulation? "It could mean that we have gone, as humans, through one or more bottlenecks in evolution, that decrease the variability present in our genome," says Marchetto, though the hypothesis is admittedly hard to prove. It is known, however, that humans' genomes are less variable than chimpanzees'.
The new study provides proof of concept that the iPSC technology can be used to understand some of the evolutionary differences between humans and non-human primates, says Narvaiza. The group plans to make technology, and all the data, available to the broader research community----which is especially helpful now that great ape research is severely restricted in the United States and abroad----so that other scientists can learn about primates using non-invasive, ethically sound methods.
The team plans to differentiate the stem cells into other tissues, such as neurons, and comparing how the cells from different species behave. They will also use the iPSC technology to investigate how chimpanzees might differ from people in susceptibility to cancer, genetic diseases and viral infection.
###
Other researchers on the study were Ahmet Denli, Christopher Benner, Thomas Lazzarini, and Apu Paquola of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies; Jason Nathanson
and Gene Yeo of the University of California San Diego,
Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine; Keval Desai of the University of California San Diego, Division of Biological Sciences; Roberto Herai and Alysson Muotri of the University of California San Diego, School of Medicine; Matthew Weitzman of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine; and senior and corresponding author Fred H. Gage of the Salk Institute and Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny.
The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the G. Harold & Leila Y. Mathers Foundation and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.
About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the world's preeminent basic research institutions, where internationally renowned faculty probe fundamental life science questions in a unique, collaborative, and creative environment. Focused both on discovery and on mentoring future generations of researchers, Salk scientists make groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer's, diabetes and infectious diseases by studying neuroscience, genetics, cell and plant biology, and related disciplines.
Faculty achievements have been recognized with numerous honors, including Nobel Prizes and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1960 by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, M.D., the Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Activist investor Carl Icahn may be putting more pressure on Apple CEO Tim Cook to get more aggressive about boosting the iPhone maker's stock price.
Icahn posted on his Twitter account Wednesday that he had sent Cook a letter in the afternoon. He said he would share the letter Thursday on a new website called "Shareholders' Square Table."
The missive follows up on a Sept. 30 dinner with Cook that Icahn hosted at his New York apartment. During that get-together, Icahn said he lobbied Cook to spend $150 billion buying back Apple Inc.'s own stock. That's more than double the amount that the Cupertino, Calif., company has committed to spend.
Icahn, whose wealth is estimated at $20 billion by Forbes magazine, has said his fund has invested about $2 billion in Apple. At that amount, Icahn would own less than a 1 percent stake in Apple.
Icahn, 77, has a long history of buying significant stakes in companies with a slumping stock price and then pressing the corporate leaders to pursue plans that he thinks would make the shares more valuable.
While Apple's market value of about $477 billion is more than any other publicly traded company, its stock prices has fallen about 25 percent from a peak 13 months ago. Investors have been worried about tougher competition facing Apple in the smartphone and table market, as well as the lack of a breakthrough product since the death of its chief visionary, Steve Jobs, two years ago. Those worries didn't dissipate with unveiling of Apple's latest iPads on Tuesday.
Apple's stock rose $5.09 Wednesday to close at $524.96.
Icahn believes Apple could lift its stock by taking advantage of low interest rates to borrow money to finance its proposed stock buybacks. The buybacks would fuel demand for Apple's stock and increase the company's earnings per share by reducing the amount of stock. Higher earnings per share usually lift a company's stock price.
Neither Apple nor Icahn responded to requests for comment on Wednesday.
In some instances, Icahn has threatened to try to oust corporate boards that don't follow his wishes. Icahn hasn't yet said whether he might pursue a shake-up at Apple if the company rebuffs him.
Icahn sent his letter to Cook the day after disclosing he had sold more than half his stake in one of his biggest successes, an investment in Internet movie service Netflix Inc.
In that instance, Icahn did little but give Netflix CEO Reed Hastings a vote of confidence at a time when the company had fallen out of favor. After accumulating a nearly 10 percent stake in Netflix while the stock was trading below $60 last year, Icahn reaped a pre-tax gain of nearly $800 million by selling 3 million shares at prices ranging from $304.23 to $341.44 earlier this month.
Icahn still owns nearly 2.7 million Netflix shares, leaving him with a 4.5 percent stake in the Los Gatos, Calif., company.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel was granted a new trial on Wednesday by a Connecticut judge who ruled his attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was convicted in 2002 of killing his neighbor in 1975.
The ruling by Judge Thomas Bishop marked a dramatic reversal after years of unsuccessful appeals by Skakel, the 53-year-old nephew of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy. Skakel is serving 20 years to life.
Bridgeport State's Attorney John Smriga said prosecutors will appeal the decision.
Skakel's current attorney, Hubert Santos, said he expects to file a motion for bail on Thursday. If a judge approves it, Skakel could then post bond and be released from prison.
"We're very, very thrilled," Santos said. "I always felt that Michael was innocent."
Skakel argued his trial attorney, Michael Sherman, was negligent in defending him when he was convicted in the golf club bludgeoning of Martha Moxley when they were 15 in wealthy Greenwich.
Prosecutors contended Sherman's efforts far exceeded standards and that the verdict was based on compelling evidence against Skakel.
John Moxley, the victim's brother, said the ruling took him and his family by surprise and they hope the state wins an appeal.
"Having been in the courtroom during the trial, there were a lot of things that Mickey Sherman did very cleverly," Moxley said about Skakel's trial lawyer. "But the evidence was against him. And when the evidence is against you, there's almost nothing you can do.
"I don't care if it was Perry Mason," Moxley said. "The state had the evidence. It was his own words and deeds that led to the conviction."
In his ruling, the judge wrote that defense in such a case requires attention to detail, an energetic investigation and a coherent plan of defense.
"Trial counsel's failures in each of these areas of representation were significant and, ultimately, fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense," Bishop wrote. "As a consequence of trial counsel's failures as stated, the state procured a judgment of conviction that lacks reliability."
Among other issues, the judge wrote that the defense could have focused more on Skakel's brother, Thomas, who was an early suspect in the case because he was the last person seen with Moxley. Had Sherman done so, "there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different," the judge wrote.
During a state trial in April on the appeal, Skakel took the stand and blasted Sherman's handling of the case, portraying him as an overly confident lawyer having fun and basking in the limelight while making fundamental mistakes from poor jury picks to failing to track down key witnesses.
Santos argued that the prosecutors' case rested entirely on two witnesses of dubious credibility who came forward with stories of confessions after 20 years and the announcement of a reward. Skakel had an alibi, he said.
Santos contends Sherman was "too enamored with the media attention to focus on the defense." Sherman told criminal defense attorneys at a seminar in Las Vegas six months before the trial that one of his goals in representing Skakel was to have a "good time," Santos said.
Sherman has said he did all he could to prevent Skakel's conviction and denied he was distracted by media attention in the high-profile case.
Santos contends Sherman failed to obtain or present evidence against earlier suspects, failed to sufficiently challenge the state's star witness and other testimony and made risky jury picks including a police officer.
Prosecutors countered that Sherman spent thousands of hours preparing the defense, challenged the state on large and small legal issues, consulted experts and was assisted by some of the state's top lawyers. Sherman attacked the state's evidence, presented an alibi and pointed the finger at an earlier suspect, prosecutors said.
"This strategy failed not because of any fault of Sherman's, but because of the strength of the state's case," prosecutor Susann Gill wrote in court papers.
The state's case included three confessions and nearly a dozen incriminating statements by Skakel over the years, Gill said. She also said there was strong evidence of motive.
"His drug-addled mental state, coupled with the infuriating knowledge that his hated brother Tommy had a sexual liaison with Martha, and the fact that Martha spurned his advances, triggered the rage which led him to beat her to death with a golf club," Gill wrote.
Gill said what Sherman did with his personal time was irrelevant. She said the evidence cited by the defense was not significant and that Sherman had sound strategic reasons for his decisions.
Skakel, who maintains his innocence, was denied parole last year and was told he would not be eligible again to be considered for release for five years.
Data revenues through the roof, a full 75 percent of postpaid customers now on smartphones
AT&T has just posted its Q3 2013 earnings report, and the wireless side of the company's business is growing as it seems to do every quarter. The nation's second-largest carrier posted growth in revenues, earnings, subscribers — here's the breakdown:
$17.5 billion in revenues, up 5.1 percent year-over-year
$15.5 billion in wireless service revenues, up 3.7 percent y-o-y
$5.5 billion in wireless data revenues, up 17.6 percent y-o-y
$4.6 billion in operating income, up 3.4 percent y-o-y
989,000 net subscribers added in the quarter
Those are some solid numbers for the carrier, and AT&T is seeing growth in all the right places. Postpaid ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) for smartphones is up 3.1 percent for the quarter (and up 1.5 percent when factoring tablets), and data ARPU was up 16.7 percent.
According to sources at AllThingsD (which TechCrunch now confirms) Pinterest has closed on a significant new round of financing: $225 million in new funding, with Fidelity Investments in the lead. TechCrunch sources are now confirming the full AllThingsD report. The funding values Pinterest at $3.8 billion, an exceptionally rich valuation for the young company.
The round included participation from current investors Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Valiant Capital Management, but not its most recent investor Rakuten. The Japanese e-commerce giant invested $100 million in the service in May 2012.
That May 2012 round of funding was said to value Pinterest at $1.5 billion, or less than half of what the company is now worth on paper. That’s an impressive $2.3 billion market cap bump in just over a year.
The funding is being used for international efforts, said AllThingsD, which noted that Pinterest has hired country managers in Italy, France, and England.
The $225 million will also be used to purchase “talent” and “technology.” Expect Pinterest to pick up a number of small firms, in mostly stock transactions that contain a cash component. Pinterest has now raised $338 million.
The question now is how will Pinterest make good on a $3.8 billion valuation. The answer might be an untraditional advertising model. Charging advertisers for impressions or relatively rare mobile clicks might not earn enough money. But if Pinterest developed an advertising scheme that looked more like a revenue share where it gets paid dollars when its ads lead directly to people buying things, opposed to getting paid cents when people click, it could earn revenue worthy of its valuation.
UPDATE:
Pinterest is now confirming the funding, investors and valuation, with a statement from co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann to AllThingsD:
“We hope to be a service that everyone uses to inspire their future, whether that’s dinner tomorrow night, a vacation next summer, or a dream house someday. This new investment enables us to pursue that goal even more aggressively.”
They’ve also released some stats:
Pinterest will use the additional capital for corporate purposes including:
International expansion that builds on 125% international growth since the beginning of the year. Pinterest recently launched in UK, France and Italy and plans to launch in 10 more countries before the end of the year.
Investment in the core Pinterest service, especially mobile which has grown 50% since the beginning of the year to become more than three-fourths of all usage (for comparison, Linkedin just announced 38%).
Continued development of monetization, which first began testing earlier this month, into a global program.
Capital investments in technical infrastructure to make the service faster, more reliable and more efficient.
Contact: Alexandra Bassil a.bassil@miami.edu 305-284-1092 University of Miami
New study establishes first-ever connections between the Mississippi River
A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science showed that the complex circulation from the Mississippi River plume played a substantial role in the transport and fate of the oil following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident. These findings provide new information on the transport of oil and other pollutants in the Gulf of Mexico. The research, published in the Oct. 2013 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, was funded by grants from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative and the National Science Foundation.
UM Research Associate Professor Villy Kourafalou developed a high-resolution model to examine the movement of the surface oil patch resulting from the deep oil release from the Deepwater Horizon under the influence of daily variability of the Mississippi River. The study employed NOAA observations for the evolution of the surface oil patch and revealed that fronts created by the Mississippi plume helped to keep oil released during the Deepwater Horizon incident away from the coasts east of the Mississippi Delta, while plume currents captured some oil to the west of the Mississippi Delta.
"Since the Gulf of Mexico is such a complex ocean system, and the oil spill was near the Mississippi Delta, we realized we had to carefully account for both the offshore currents and the coastal currents, which are largely dominated by the Mississippi River plume," said Kourafalou. "The model was validated with data and is now part of an Earth System modeling framework to help inform decision makers in the future."
During the response to the Deepwater Horizon incident, emergency managers wondered if flooding the Mississippi River might help to divert the oil being released into the water from impacting communities on the Gulf's north coast. However, no operational computer models with details in river plume dynamics existed that might help predict how the environment might react to being flooded.
This study marks the first time a connection is established between the near surface signatures of a large river plume and the hydrocarbons released from a deep oil plume. The new prediction modeling system can help better understand the transport of oil and other pollutants under the complex circulation in the Gulf of Mexico. Waters of Mississippi origin can be often traced as far south as the Florida Straits, potentially impacting the Florida Keys.
Kourafalou is a member of the Deep-C (Deep Sea to Coast Connectivity in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico) Consortium, which is investigating the environmental consequences of petroleum hydrocarbon release in the deep Gulf on living marine resources and ecosystem health. Deep-C is examining the geomorphologic, hydrologic, and biogeochemical settings that influence the distribution and fate of the oil and dispersants released during the Deepwater Horizon (DwH) accident, and using the resulting data for model studies that support improved responses to possible future incidents.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative is an independent body established by BP to administer the company's 10-year, $500 million commitment to independent research into the effects of the Deepwater Horizon incident. Through a series of competitive grant programs, the GRI is investigating the impacts of the oil, dispersed oil, and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and the affected coastal States in a broad context of improving fundamental understanding of the dynamics of such events and their environmental stresses and public health implications.
###
About the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School
The University of Miami is the largest private research institution in the southeastern United States. The University's mission is to provide quality education, attract and retain outstanding students, support the faculty and their research, and build an endowment for University initiatives. Founded in the 1940's, the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science has grown into one of the world's premier marine and atmospheric research institutions. Offering dynamic interdisciplinary academics, the Rosenstiel School is dedicated to helping communities to better understand the planet, participating in the establishment of environmental policies, and aiding in the improvement of society and quality of life. For more information, please visit http://www.rsmas.miami.edu.
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New research illustrates Mississippi River's role
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
23-Oct-2013
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Contact: Alexandra Bassil a.bassil@miami.edu 305-284-1092 University of Miami
New study establishes first-ever connections between the Mississippi River
A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science showed that the complex circulation from the Mississippi River plume played a substantial role in the transport and fate of the oil following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident. These findings provide new information on the transport of oil and other pollutants in the Gulf of Mexico. The research, published in the Oct. 2013 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, was funded by grants from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative and the National Science Foundation.
UM Research Associate Professor Villy Kourafalou developed a high-resolution model to examine the movement of the surface oil patch resulting from the deep oil release from the Deepwater Horizon under the influence of daily variability of the Mississippi River. The study employed NOAA observations for the evolution of the surface oil patch and revealed that fronts created by the Mississippi plume helped to keep oil released during the Deepwater Horizon incident away from the coasts east of the Mississippi Delta, while plume currents captured some oil to the west of the Mississippi Delta.
"Since the Gulf of Mexico is such a complex ocean system, and the oil spill was near the Mississippi Delta, we realized we had to carefully account for both the offshore currents and the coastal currents, which are largely dominated by the Mississippi River plume," said Kourafalou. "The model was validated with data and is now part of an Earth System modeling framework to help inform decision makers in the future."
During the response to the Deepwater Horizon incident, emergency managers wondered if flooding the Mississippi River might help to divert the oil being released into the water from impacting communities on the Gulf's north coast. However, no operational computer models with details in river plume dynamics existed that might help predict how the environment might react to being flooded.
This study marks the first time a connection is established between the near surface signatures of a large river plume and the hydrocarbons released from a deep oil plume. The new prediction modeling system can help better understand the transport of oil and other pollutants under the complex circulation in the Gulf of Mexico. Waters of Mississippi origin can be often traced as far south as the Florida Straits, potentially impacting the Florida Keys.
Kourafalou is a member of the Deep-C (Deep Sea to Coast Connectivity in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico) Consortium, which is investigating the environmental consequences of petroleum hydrocarbon release in the deep Gulf on living marine resources and ecosystem health. Deep-C is examining the geomorphologic, hydrologic, and biogeochemical settings that influence the distribution and fate of the oil and dispersants released during the Deepwater Horizon (DwH) accident, and using the resulting data for model studies that support improved responses to possible future incidents.
The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative is an independent body established by BP to administer the company's 10-year, $500 million commitment to independent research into the effects of the Deepwater Horizon incident. Through a series of competitive grant programs, the GRI is investigating the impacts of the oil, dispersed oil, and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and the affected coastal States in a broad context of improving fundamental understanding of the dynamics of such events and their environmental stresses and public health implications.
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About the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School
The University of Miami is the largest private research institution in the southeastern United States. The University's mission is to provide quality education, attract and retain outstanding students, support the faculty and their research, and build an endowment for University initiatives. Founded in the 1940's, the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science has grown into one of the world's premier marine and atmospheric research institutions. Offering dynamic interdisciplinary academics, the Rosenstiel School is dedicated to helping communities to better understand the planet, participating in the establishment of environmental policies, and aiding in the improvement of society and quality of life. For more information, please visit http://www.rsmas.miami.edu.
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PARIS (Reuters) - The chief executive of Roche did not rule out a move into treatments for rare diseases on Wednesday, saying the Swiss drugmaker would go where it could address unmet medical needs, even for very small numbers of patients.
There has been speculation that Roche might branch out into the lucrative area of rare or so-called orphan diseases, which affect only a small number of people, after reports it was considering bids for two U.S.-based companies, Alexion Pharmaceuticals and BioMarin Pharmaceuticals.
Chief Executive Severin Schwan told a news conference in Paris that Roche's main criteria when looking at which diseases to go after was not the size of the patient population but how much additional value and medical benefit could be generated for the individual patient.
Asked if that meant he did not exclude a move into rare diseases, he said: "We go where the science takes us, wherever it is, independent from the size of the patient population."
Schwan said that Roche's portfolio already included treatments for rare diseases such as cystic fibrosis and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL).
"The reasons we went into those areas was because there was a medical need ... and we felt we could make a difference for those patients concerned," he said.
But he declined to comment specifically on whether Roche was interested in buying Alexion or BioMarin.
His broader comments on the topic contrast with those of the group head of pharmaceuticals, who said in an interview last month that treating ultra-rare diseases was a business that was distinct from Roche's current area of expertise.
Shares in Roche were up 0.7 percent at 248 Swiss francs at 1500 GMT, when the STOXX Europe 600 Healthcare sector index was up 0.1 percent.
Shares in Alexion were down 0.2 percent at $107.52 while Biomarin was down 0.1 percent at $67.28, while the Nasdaq Biotech Index was down 0.7 percent.
'OPEN TO LOOKING'
High prices and lower development and marketing costs of treatments for orphan diseases are drawing the attention of big pharmaceutical companies as older drugs lose patent protection.
Shares in biotechnology group Alexion jumped in July after people familiar with the matter said Roche was seeking financing for a possible bid. No offer has emerged.
Roche has also been linked to BioMarin Pharmaceuticals, although the company denied last month it was raising financing for a bid on the company.
The Basel-based firm is looking to branch out beyond its core cancer drugs and Schwan highlighted the group's focus on autoimmune and inflammatory diseases as well as neuroscience.
"So in those three areas naturally we are a partner of choice for many companies. But again, if there was an interesting opportunity outside of those established areas, I would be very open to look at it," he said.
Schwan last week knocked down speculation that Roche could merge with rival Novartis, saying it preferred bolt-on acquisitions.
He declined on Wednesday to give a price range for such deals, saying he wanted to stay flexible and see what opportunities come up.
"We will always go where we think we have a chance to put a progress of science into medical applications. The price is then a consequence of the opportunity," he said.
(Writing by Caroline Copley and Natalie Huet; Editing by Jane Merriman and Greg Mahlich)
MADRID (AP) — Spain's crushing two-year recession ended in the third quarter, the central bank said Wednesday. But the reality on the ground remained grim, with unemployment expected to take years to drop from record highs and the young emigrating to find a future.
Preliminary figures show Spain's economy grew 0.1 percent from July through September compared with the previous quarter. The growth blip, expected to be confirmed Oct. 30 by the national statistics agency, was driven by stronger exports after the economy declined for nine straight quarters.
The government has been trumpeting that the recession would end soon because of reforms and tough austerity measures that it says has helped convince investors Spain is a much safer bet than it was a year ago, when it came close to needed a national bailout like the one that went to Greece.
Even Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates showed some faith in the country's future by buying a stake this week in a Spanish construction company.
Still, experts say the country is just one step along the way toward a meaningful recovery. The unemployment rate, which is due to be updated Thursday for the third quarter, is at a stunning 26.3 percent.
"Spain is out of the woods in terms of a worst case scenario of needing a full bailout, but it's going to be a very long-term recovery. Unemployment is going to continue to be very high for a number of years," said Antonio Barroso, an analyst with the London-based Teneo Intelligence consulting firm.
SLIGHT ECONOMIC GROWTH
Spain has been in and out of recession for most of the past four years and significant growth is a distant memory that came to a halt in 2008 with the international financial crisis and the implosion of Spain's building boom that had lasted for more than a decade.
The current uptick is due to exporters that make cars, auto components, steel, women's clothing and agricultural goods — products that have benefited from the country's painful drive to cut wages and increasing global demand. Spain also saw a strong summer tourism season, with many travelers spooked away from countries like Egypt and Turkey amid social unrest.
But most of Spain's exporters are large companies. The small- and medium-sized companies that account for more than half of the economy are more exposed to the weak domestic market. And banks, many of which have needed rescuing over the past three years, are too afraid to give them the loans needed to expand operations and hire workers.
Despite the emergence from recession, the government predicts the economy will shrink 1.3 percent for 2013 as a whole. Next year, it is forecast to grow a meager 0.7 percent. Independent analysts are more pessimistic, with some predicting the economy will go into reverse.
"The government's optimism is based on indicators of improvements in Spain's financial state but not on improvements in the real economy on the ground," said Javier Flores, an analyst with the Asinver investment group. "Is the recession over? Yes, from an academic point of view. But has the crisis being suffered by Spaniards ended? No."
HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT
Creating the most pain in Spain is the worst jobless rate in the European Union after Greece. For people under age 25, it is a stunning 56 percent, prompting many to emigrate to Britain, Germany and Latin America for work.
And Spain's export success hasn't translated into many new jobs because the new business only emerged after companies "cut costs to the bone," said Gayle Allard, a labor market specialist with Madrid's IE Business School.
At a demonstration against government cutbacks in Madrid on Wednesday, students said they have little hope of finding work that will allow them to meet the standard of living their parents enjoyed during Spain's economic boom.
"I think all the people who are studying now may never work in their career area because it's not possible and they must emigrate," said 20-year-old university student Beatriz Otero.
Miguel Ortega, 36, was laid off a year ago from his job as an administrator at an insurance company and still hasn't found any openings related to his experience.
"For me, the future is totally uncertain," he said.
BANKS' BAD LOANS
Spain's banks are in much better shape than they were last year, when the government borrowed 40 billion euros ($55 billion) from fellow eurozone countries to shore them up. However, figures show the banks still carry worryingly high amounts of bad loans and are struggling to sell off devalued property.
With most banks worried about their own finances, credit is hard to come by. Experts say that until lending picks up, the economy won't make a significant rebound.
In August, the banks' bad loans ratio — that is, counted as a percentage of their wider portfolios — rose to 12.12 percent. That is up from 11.97 percent in July and only 1 percent in 2007, the year before the bloated real estate sector collapsed.
Analysts point out that the ratio's increase is not only due to a rise in bad loans, but also to the fact that the banks' total pool of loans is shrinking, a worrying development for an economy that needs to rebound.
"My main concern is that the level of debt and (low) domestic demand will continue to be a drag, not only for Spain, but also for Europe," said Barroso, the analyst.
When a man in Indiana, Pa., spotted a deer in the Wal-Mart parking lot, he shot it right there. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports he got six months' probation, even though it was, in fairness, the first day of hunting season.
You how it is with deer hunting, you have to get the right gear. You think about the time and place. You might build a deer stand, a kind of treehouse to shoot from high ground. Or you can do like a man in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He spotted a deer in the Wal-Mart parking lot and he shot it right there. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review says he got six months' probation, even though it was, in all fairness, the first day of hunting season when he opened fire.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
Detroit officially makes its case for bankruptcy before a federal judge on Wednesday. The city is currently saddled with $18 billion in long-term debt, and officials see bankruptcy as their only choice.
Paul Sancya/AP
Detroit officially makes its case for bankruptcy before a federal judge on Wednesday. The city is currently saddled with $18 billion in long-term debt, and officials see bankruptcy as their only choice.
Paul Sancya/AP
In Detroit on Wednesday, a federal trial begins that will determine whether that city is eligible for the nation's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy.
Hundreds of the city's creditors are lining up to oppose the bankruptcy, arguing that Detroit is violating Michigan's constitution and that if officials tried harder they could find enough savings to pay the city's bills.
Officials here say a declining population, decades of mismanagement and at times corrupt city government has cost Detroit a lot of tax revenue, leaving it drowning in red ink.
So much so that in March, the governor appointed Kevyn Orr to be an emergency manager and take control of the city's finances. He spent months crafting payment arrangements with some creditors, but hundreds of others rejected offers that amounted to accepting pennies for every dollar they were owed by Detroit.
Orr says that leaves Detroit with roughly $18 billion in long-term debt, and no other option but bankruptcy.
"There's no way out," Orr says. "The mountain of debt we have to climb over simply is insurmountable without some kind of process to resolve it. We simply cannot pay it. That's it."
Where Business Stands
Detroit's business community overwhelmingly agrees with Orr.
Dan Gilbert owns Quicken Loans, the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers and in recent months has bought more than $1 billion worth of buildings in Detroit's downtown. He's betting that Chapter 9 protection will allow Detroit to get out from under its crushing debt load and pour money back into city services, which would help make his investments pay off.
"As hard as that is to sort of suspend democracy, for a short period of time if you will, my view is, let's get it over with," Gilbert says. "Let's get it done. Let's stop talking about it [and] go through the pain and then move forward, and I think it will fade into the background."
But some of Detroit's longest-standing creditors are fighting a bankruptcy declaration, arguing that it would create big problems for them.
At the headquarters of AFSCME Council 25, the union representing the majority of city workers here, a half-dozen retirees are making phone calls. Juanita Scott says Detroit's potential bankruptcy puts her pension, her health care and her future on the chopping block.
"Because they're going to cut my medical, that's going to really hurt me bad," says the 86-year-old Scott. "Right now I'm under three different doctors' care and trying to stay in my neighborhood."
Scott says she has to have a burglar alarm because all the houses around her are going vacant. "This whole thing of bankruptcy, it's just bad," she says.
The union leadership argues Detroit's bankruptcy filing itself violates state prohibitions against cutting public pensions. Union attorney Herb Sanders even questions if Detroit is truly insolvent, because the state forbade city officials from approving tentative labor agreements that he says could have saved millions annually.
"When you think that the purpose of bankruptcy is to restructure debt, is to save the city money, and if that is your true intent then why wouldn't you sign the collective bargaining agreement with the unions that would indeed do that?" Sanders says.
The Possibility Of Lawsuits
The union will argue in court Wednesday that Detroit did not bargain in good faith. But bankruptcy attorney Douglas Bernstein says the judge may see things differently.
"There's no bright line which says what constitutes good faith and what isn't good faith," Bernstein says. "There's isn't an awful lot of precedent in Chapter 9."
Bernstein's firm worked with several of Detroit's creditors who decided not to fight the city's bankruptcy filing. He says those creditors and the city will be thrown into financial turmoil if the court finds Detroit is not eligible for Chapter 9 protection. The likely result would be a flood of lawsuits, he says.
"So they'll be fending off all the creditors in a variety of courtrooms where everybody in the creditor body is trying to get the best deal for themselves rather than in an organized, unified setting in the bankruptcy court," he says. "So you would have chaos."
And chaos is the last thing Detroiters need in a city that has seen more than its share of it in recent years. Former officials sent to prison for corruption, high unemployment and crime rates, faltering city services and now a fight over what's left in the city's coffers.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama turned to a trusted adviser on Tuesday to lead a "tech surge" aimed at repairing the troubled launch of the government website at the heart of his signature healthcare law.
Jeffrey Zients, a former official of the Office of Management and Budget who will become head of the National Economic Council in January, will provide short-term management advice on the project, said Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).
She said a team of experts and specialists drawn from government and industry, "including veterans of top Silicon Valley companies," also would work to diagnose and fix the problems that have plagued the rollout of Healthcare.gov since October 1 and drawn criticism from Republicans opposed to the law.
The websites, which Obama compared to online shopping sites such as Amazon.com, were meant to be the main vehicle for consumers to check out prices and purchase the health insurance offered under the law.
The HHS said at the weekend it was launching a "tech surge" for the website, but neither the White House nor the health department has provided details about the cause of the problems, precisely what is being done to fix them and who exactly is doing the fixing.
Obama's administration scheduled a briefing for Wednesday with Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, some of whom have expressed concern with the program's troubles.
One Democrat, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, called for an extension of the "open enrollment" date for those purchasing insurance beyond the March 31 deadline because of what she called the "incredibly frustrating and disappointing" experience people are having as they try to enroll.
The announcement that Zients would be involved underlines Obama's determination to put the website controversy behind him. Zients has 20 years of business experience as a CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur.
He helped the Obama administration figure out a solution for the "cash for clunkers" car exchange program's website, which crashed repeatedly when it opened early in Obama's first term.
Republicans, long opposed to the 2010 Affordable Care Act known as "Obamacare," have seized on the information vacuum about the website's problems to start their own investigation in Congress about the role of the White House.
CRITICISM OF DESIGN FEATURE
In a letter to two administration technology officers, Republicans on the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee said their investigation already points to significant White House involvement in discussions between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the website contractor, CGI Federal.
CGI officials have also told committee staff the widely criticized design feature requiring visitors to create accounts before shopping for insurance was implemented in late August or early September, barely a month before the October 1 start of open enrollment.
The requirement contributed to a traffic bottleneck that worsened underlying flaws in a system intended to serve millions of Americans without healthcare insurance. The technology problems have frustrated attempts by many to sign on and allowed only a trickle of enrollments.
"We are concerned that the administration required contractors to change course late in the implementation process to conceal Obamacare's effect on increasing health insurance premiums," said the letter authored by panel chairman Darrell Issa and four Republican subcommittee chairmen.
The committee probe, the second House Republican investigation into Obamacare, follows the latest attempt by the party to derail the law during a 16-day government shutdown in October.
Republicans, who view the law as an unwarranted expansion of the federal government, eventually dropped demands for delays or changes to the healthcare law before they would support a federal funding bill and allowed the government to reopen.
Obama said on Monday he was frustrated by the website's problems. A prolonged delay in getting Healthcare.gov to work could jeopardize White House efforts to sign up as many as 7 million people in 2014, the first full year it takes effect.
CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS
The White House declined to directly address the October 21 letter to U.S. Chief Information Officer Steve VanRoekel and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park.
"It's not about, you know, who's to blame for glitches in a website. What we need to focus on is fixing those problems, making the information that the American people want available to them in an efficient way. And that's what we're doing," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Under Issa's leadership, the House oversight committee has investigated the Obama administration on several issues since Republicans took control of the chamber in the 2010 elections.
Last year, Issa accused Obama or his aides of obstructing an investigation into the botched "Fast and Furious" gun-running probe on the Arizona border with Mexico. He also spearheaded the House investigation of a 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, and another into the Internal Revenue Service's handling of conservative non-profit groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Issa's committee is asking VanRoekel and Park to provide all documents and communications that describe the federal system's architecture and design, CMS' role as system integrator, problems relayed to the White House and the decision to require account creation as a prerequisite to seeing insurance plans.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee has started its own investigation and is scheduled to question Sebelius and several contractors at separate hearings within the next eight days.
Polls show that a narrow majority of Americans oppose the healthcare law, and the flap over the launch of the insurance exchanges has done little to change public opinion.
A Reuters/Ipsos online poll on Tuesday showed 54 percent of Americans opposed the law and 46 percent favored it. A poll from a month ago found similar percentages divided over the law.
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton and Susan Heavey; Editing by Fred Barbash, Grant McCool and Christopher Wilson)
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