Holly Madison in Doghouse with Homeowners Association















01/15/2013 at 03:30 PM EST







Holly Madison and dog Louis


Denise Truscello/WireImag


Holly Madison is having a little trouble getting her neighbors to think pink.

The former Playboy pin-up – and current mom-to-be – is moving out of her home in the Rancho Circle neighborhood of Las Vegas after repeated complaints from the homeowners association over her pink doghouse, which is human-sized and built to accommodate her three pups, Louis, Napoleon and Josephine.

"When I went over it with my contractor, he consulted the HOA on all their restrictions and whatnot," she told Las Vegas Weekly. "He told me it has to match the architecture of the house, so I did that with the roof because … it's possible you could see the roof from the street, but you can't see any of it from the street, actually."

In addition, the structure's creative color has also been a point of conflict for the association, which has repeatedly fined the star over it – not that Madison's taking their actions lying down.

"It's a hundred dollars a month," she said. "I haven't been paying it. I just keep sending them nasty letters."

Luckily for Madison, when the doghouse was constructed, it was designed to be movable.

"Yes, I'm going to bring it," she replied when asked if it will accompany her to her newest home.

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Vegas woman who couldn't stop growing dies at 34


LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas woman who suffered a rare disorder that made it impossible for her to stop growing has died. Tanya Angus was 34.


Karen Strutynski says her daughter stood 7 feet 2 inches and weighed about 400 pounds when she died Monday, apparently from a tear in her heart.


Angus was 5 feet 8 as a teenager and had modeled on runways before she was diagnosed with acromegaly, or gigantism, at age 22.


She grew so much over the next decade that her rings had to be modified, she had to use custom utensils, and she got around in a motorized wheelchair.


Strutynski says her daughter was sometimes depressed about the condition but also saw it as a gift from God and an opportunity to help others with the disorder.


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Wall Street flat as Apple down again but retailers rise

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were nearly flat on Tuesday as tech heavyweight Apple dragged on the market as it extended losses into a third day, while economic data helped retailers advance.


Apple was the biggest weight on both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.ndx> after reports on Monday of cuts to orders for iPhone parts. Shares were down 3 percent at $486.50 after hitting a session low of $483.84, its lowest level since February.


Retailer stocks advanced and helped to minimize the market's decline after a government report that retail sales rose more than expected in December was seen as a favorable sign for fourth-quarter growth. However, a separate report showed manufacturing activity in New York state contracted for the sixth month in a row in January.


"It's trying to push its way up in here, the question is, has Apple stabilized maybe a little bit down here? The retail sales numbers were really good, much better than expected this morning and that is helping the whole retail group," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont.


"The bulls are clearly trying to take control of this market and hold it up here. There is clearly buying on any of the dips."


American Eagle Outfitters Inc gained 4.4 percent to $20.51 and Gap Inc rose 3.3 percent to $32.44. The Morgan Stanley retail index <.mvr> climbed 1.5 percent.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 21.56 points, or 0.16 percent, at 13,528.88. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.98 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,471.66. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 8.25 points, or 0.26 percent, at 3,109.26.


Also keeping investors on edge was the looming debt ceiling debate. On Monday, President Barack Obama rejected any negotiations with Republicans over raising the U.S. debt ceiling. The United States could default on its debt if Congress does not increase the borrowing limit.


Resolving the debt ceiling debate is more a question of how than if. Investors don't expect a U.S. default, but they are also wary of another eleventh-hour agreement like the one in August 2011.


An expected lackluster earnings season, too, kept investors from taking aggressive bets. Analyst estimates for the quarter have fallen sharply since October. S&P 500 earnings growth is now seen up just 1.8 percent from a year ago, Thomson Reuters data showed.


Homebuilder Lennar reported a sharp rise in quarterly profit, but the stock fell 1.7 percent to $40.33 on worries that growth in orders was slowing. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> declined 0.3 percent.


(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)



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France to stay in Mali until stability restored


BAMAKO/DUBAI (Reuters) - France will end its intervention in Mali only once stability has returned to the West African country, French President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday, raising the prospects of a costly, drawn-out operation against al Qaeda-linked rebels.


Paris has poured hundreds of soldiers into Mali and carried out air raids since Friday in the northern half of the country, which Western and regional states fear could become a base for attacks by Islamist militants in Africa and Europe.


Thousands of African troops are due to take over the offensive but regional armies are scrambling to accelerate the operation - initially not expected for months and brought forward by France's bombing campaign aimed at stopping a rebel advance on a strategic town last week.


"We have one goal. To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory," Hollande told a news conference during a visit to the United Arab Emirates.


Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, accompanying Hollande, said the offensive against the Malian rebels could take some time, and the current French level of involvement could last weeks. Elections, however, would take months to organize.


French aircraft earlier hit rebels with fresh air strikes and a column of dozens of French armored vehicles rumbled into the dusty riverside capital of Bamako overnight, bringing to about 750 the number of French troops in Mali.


Paris has said it plans to deploy 2,500 soldiers in its former colony to bolster the Malian army and work with the intervention force provided by West African states.


West African defense chiefs met in Bamako on Tuesday to approve plans for speeding up the deployment of 3,300 regional troops, foreseen in a United Nations-backed intervention plan to be led by Africans.


Nigeria pledged to deploy soldiers within 24 hours and Belgium said it was sending transport planes and helicopters to help, but West Africa's armies need time to become operational.


Mali's north, a vast and inhospitable area of desert and rugged mountains the size of Texas, was seized last year by an Islamist alliance combining al Qaeda's north African wing AQIM with splinter group MUJWA and the home-grown Ansar Dine rebels.


Any delay in following up on the French air bombardments of Islamist bases and fuel depots with a ground offensive could allow the insurgents to slip away into the desert and mountains, regroup and counter-attack.


The rebels, who French officials say are mobile and well-armed, have shown they can hit back, dislodging government forces from Diabaly, 350 km (220 miles) from Bamako on Monday.


Residents said the town was still under Islamist control on Tuesday despite a number of air strikes that shook houses.


An eye witness near Segou, to the south, told Reuters he had seen 20 French Special Forces soldiers driving toward Diabaly.


Malians have largely welcomed the French intervention, having seen their army suffer a series of defeats by the rebels.


"With the arrival of the French, we have started to see the situation on the front evolve in our favor," said Aba Sanare, a resident of Bamako.


QUESTIONS OVER READINESS


Aboudou Toure Cheaka, a senior regional official in Bamako, said the West African troops would be on the ground in a week.


The original timetable for the 3,300-strong U.N.-sanctioned African force - to be backed by western logistics, money and intelligence services - did not initially foresee full deployment before September due to logistical constraints.


Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Guinea have all offered troops. Col. Mohammed Yerima, spokesman for Nigeria's defense ministry, said the first 190 soldiers would be dispatched within 24 hours.


But Nigeria, which is due to lead the mission, has already cautioned that even if some troops arrive in Mali soon, their training and equipping will take more time.


Sub-Saharan Africa's top oil producer, which already has peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur and is fighting a bloody and difficult insurgency at home against Islamist sect Boko Haram, could struggle to deliver on its troop commitment of 900 men.


One senior government adviser in Nigeria said the Mali deployment was stretching the country's military.


"The whole thing's a mess. We don't have any troops with experience of those extreme conditions, even of how to keep all that sand from ruining your equipment. And we're facing battle-hardened guys who live in those dunes," the adviser said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.


FRENCH LINING UP SUPPORT


France, which has repeatedly said it has abandoned its role as the policeman of its former African colonies, said on Monday that the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Germany had also offered logistical support.


Fabius has said Gulf Arab states would help the Mali campaign while Belgium said on Tuesday it would send two C130 transport planes and two medical helicopters to Mali following a request from Paris.


A meeting of donors for the operation was expected to be held in Addis Ababa at the end of January.


Security experts have warned that the multinational intervention in Mali, couched in terms of a campaign by governments against "terrorism", could provoke a jihadist backlash against France and the West, and African allies.


U.S. officials have warned of links between AQIM, Boko Haram in Nigeria and al Shabaab Islamic militants fighting in Somalia.


Al Shabaab, which foiled a French effort at the weekend to rescue a French secret agent it was holding hostage, urged Muslims around the world to rise up against what it called "Christian" attacks against Islam.


"Our brothers in Mali, show patience and tolerance and you will win. War planes never liberate a land," Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab's spokesman, said on a rebel-run website.


U.S. officials said Washington was sharing information with French forces in Mali and considering providing logistics, surveillance and airlift capability.


"We have made a commitment that al Qaeda is not going to find any place to hide," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters as he began a visit to Europe. Panetta later said the U.S. had no plans to send troops to Mali.


"I don't know what the French endgame is for this. What is their goal? It reminds me of our initial move into Afghanistan," a U.S. military source told Reuters.


"Air strikes are fine. But pretty soon you run out of easy targets. Then what do you do? What do you do when they head up into the mountains?"


(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi; Felix Onuah in Abuja and Tim Cocks in Lagos; Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu; Michelle Nichols Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Richard Valdmanis in Dakar; Joe Bavier in Abidjan; Jan Vermeylen in Brussels; Writing by Pascal Fletcher and David Lewis; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Giles Elgood)



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Apple supplier sees big Q4 boost, likely a good sign for iPhone 5 demand






Shares of Apple (AAPL) have been hit hard over the last few days. Investors continue to worry about the company’s profit margins, demand for its popular line of smartphones and tablets, and its future endeavors. With upcoming competition from Research in Motion (RIMM) and Microsoft (MSFT), and an ongoing battle with Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system, analysts fear that Apple’s mobile dominance may be a thing of the past. While we won’t officially know anything until the company reports its holiday earnings on January 23rd, a small German company has painted a calming picture for Apple shareholders.


[More from BGR: HTC One SV review]






Dialog Semiconductor announced last week that it expects to report a significant increase in sales for its December quarter. The company noted that the increase was due to “a stronger than anticipated end of year, underpinned by a strong late surge in demand for smartphone and tablet products.” Dialog Semiconductor now expects to report revenues of $ 268 million, an increase from between $ 215 million and $ 235 million.


[More from BGR: Extensive BlackBerry Z10 demo video posted by German website [video]]


The important thing to note is that, as of this past fall, Apple is Dialog’s largest customer and accounts for 60% of its total revenue.


Logic dictates that solid demand for Apple’s iPhone and iPad during the holidays helped boost Dialog’s performance. This could also mean that the iPhone-maker will report not only a strong December quarter, but a better-than-expected March quarter as well.


It looks like all this talk about customers losing interest in Apple may indeed be premature.


This article was originally published on BGR.com


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Britney Grabs Coffee Post Split with Jason Trawick















01/14/2013 at 03:50 PM EST



Britney Spears still believes in "love" – at least when it comes to wearing it.

The pop star, 31 – whose failed engagement to Jason Trawick, 41, was announced on Friday – grabbed coffee in L.A. on Monday, sporting a black and white sweatshirt with the four-letter word displayed in large letters across the front.

The former X Factor judge looked casual, wearing shades and her hair in a ponytail.

Once the split was official, a source told PEOPLE, "Britney had a lot of issues with Jason doing his own thing – in business and seeing his friends. In her perfect world he would have been home with her twenty-four/seven, so that was a point of contention; something they were always working on."

But she didn't seem too bent out of shape when she made her outing and grabbed two drinks to go, as she wore a happy grin the whole time.

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Hospitals crack down on workers refusing flu shots


CHICAGO (AP) — Patients can refuse a flu shot. Should doctors and nurses have that right, too? That is the thorny question surfacing as U.S. hospitals increasingly crack down on employees who won't get flu shots, with some workers losing their jobs over their refusal.


"Where does it say that I am no longer a patient if I'm a nurse," wondered Carrie Calhoun, a longtime critical care nurse in suburban Chicago who was fired last month after she refused a flu shot.


Hospitals' get-tougher measures coincide with an earlier-than-usual flu season hitting harder than in recent mild seasons. Flu is widespread in most states, and at least 20 children have died.


Most doctors and nurses do get flu shots. But in the past two months, at least 15 nurses and other hospital staffers in four states have been fired for refusing, and several others have resigned, according to affected workers, hospital authorities and published reports.


In Rhode Island, one of three states with tough penalties behind a mandatory vaccine policy for health care workers, more than 1,000 workers recently signed a petition opposing the policy, according to a labor union that has filed suit to end the regulation.


Why would people whose job is to protect sick patients refuse a flu shot? The reasons vary: allergies to flu vaccine, which are rare; religious objections; and skepticism about whether vaccinating health workers will prevent flu in patients.


Dr. Carolyn Bridges, associate director for adult immunization at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says the strongest evidence is from studies in nursing homes, linking flu vaccination among health care workers with fewer patient deaths from all causes.


"We would all like to see stronger data," she said. But other evidence shows flu vaccination "significantly decreases" flu cases, she said. "It should work the same in a health care worker versus somebody out in the community."


Cancer nurse Joyce Gingerich is among the skeptics and says her decision to avoid the shot is mostly "a personal thing." She's among seven employees at IU Health Goshen Hospital in northern Indiana who were recently fired for refusing flu shots. Gingerich said she gets other vaccinations but thinks it should be a choice. She opposes "the injustice of being forced to put something in my body."


Medical ethicist Art Caplan says health care workers' ethical obligation to protect patients trumps their individual rights.


"If you don't want to do it, you shouldn't work in that environment," said Caplan, medical ethics chief at New York University's Langone Medical Center. "Patients should demand that their health care provider gets flu shots — and they should ask them."


For some people, flu causes only mild symptoms. But it can also lead to pneumonia, and there are thousands of hospitalizations and deaths each year. The number of deaths has varied in recent decades from about 3,000 to 49,000.


A survey by CDC researchers found that in 2011, more than 400 U.S. hospitals required flu vaccinations for their employees and 29 hospitals fired unvaccinated employees.


At Calhoun's hospital, Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, Ill., unvaccinated workers granted exemptions must wear masks and tell patients, "I'm wearing the mask for your safety," Calhoun says. She says that's discriminatory and may make patients want to avoid "the dirty nurse" with the mask.


The hospital justified its vaccination policy in an email, citing the CDC's warning that this year's flu outbreak was "expected to be among the worst in a decade" and noted that Illinois has already been hit especially hard. The mandatory vaccine policy "is consistent with our health system's mission to provide the safest environment possible."


The government recommends flu shots for nearly everyone, starting at age 6 months. Vaccination rates among the general public are generally lower than among health care workers.


According to the most recent federal data, about 63 percent of U.S. health care workers had flu shots as of November. That's up from previous years, but the government wants 90 percent coverage of health care workers by 2020.


The highest rate, about 88 percent, was among pharmacists, followed by doctors at 84 percent, and nurses, 82 percent. Fewer than half of nursing assistants and aides are vaccinated, Bridges said.


Some hospitals have achieved 90 percent but many fall short. A government health advisory panel has urged those below 90 percent to consider a mandatory program.


Also, the accreditation body over hospitals requires them to offer flu vaccines to workers, and those failing to do that and improve vaccination rates could lose accreditation.


Starting this year, the government's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is requiring hospitals to report employees' flu vaccination rates as a means to boost the rates, the CDC's Bridges said. Eventually the data will be posted on the agency's "Hospital Compare" website.


Several leading doctor groups support mandatory flu shots for workers. And the American Medical Association in November endorsed mandatory shots for those with direct patient contact in nursing homes; elderly patients are particularly vulnerable to flu-related complications. The American Nurses Association supports mandates if they're adopted at the state level and affect all hospitals, but also says exceptions should be allowed for medical or religious reasons.


Mandates for vaccinating health care workers against other diseases, including measles, mumps and hepatitis, are widely accepted. But some workers have less faith that flu shots work — partly because there are several types of flu virus that often differ each season and manufacturers must reformulate vaccines to try and match the circulating strains.


While not 100 percent effective, this year's vaccine is a good match, the CDC's Bridges said.


Several states have laws or regulations requiring flu vaccination for health care workers but only three — Arkansas, Maine and Rhode Island — spell out penalties for those who refuse, according to Alexandra Stewart, a George Washington University expert in immunization policy and co-author of a study appearing this month in the journal Vaccine.


Rhode Island's regulation, enacted in December, may be the toughest and is being challenged in court by a health workers union. The rule allows exemptions for religious or medical reasons, but requires unvaccinated workers in contact with patients to wear face masks during flu season. Employees who refuse the masks can be fined $100 and may face a complaint or reprimand for unprofessional conduct that could result in losing their professional license.


Some Rhode Island hospitals post signs announcing that workers wearing masks have not received flu shots. Opponents say the masks violate their health privacy.


"We really strongly support the goal of increasing vaccination rates among health care workers and among the population as a whole," but it should be voluntary, said SEIU Healthcare Employees Union spokesman Chas Walker.


Supporters of health care worker mandates note that to protect public health, courts have endorsed forced vaccination laws affecting the general population during disease outbreaks, and have upheld vaccination requirements for schoolchildren.


Cases involving flu vaccine mandates for health workers have had less success. A 2009 New York state regulation mandating health care worker vaccinations for swine flu and seasonal flu was challenged in court but was later rescinded because of a vaccine shortage. And labor unions have challenged individual hospital mandates enacted without collective bargaining; an appeals court upheld that argument in 2007 in a widely cited case involving Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle.


Calhoun, the Illinois nurse, says she is unsure of her options.


"Most of the hospitals in my area are all implementing these policies," she said. "This conflict could end the career I have dedicated myself to."


__


Online:


R.I. union lawsuit against mandatory vaccines: http://www.seiu1199ne.org/files/2013/01/FluLawsuitRI.pdf


CDC: http://www.cdc.gov


___


AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner


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Apple weighs on S&P, Nasdaq; Dell jumps after report


NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended lower on Monday as concerns about demand for Apple Inc products sent shares of the tech heavyweight lower and investors braced for earnings disappointments.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 21.88 points, or 0.16 percent, at 13,510.31. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 1.20 points, or 0.08 percent, at 1,470.85. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 8.13 points, or 0.26 percent, at 3,117.50.


(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Nick Zieminski)



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Mali Islamists counter attack, promise France long war


BAMAKO/PARIS (Reuters) - Al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels launched a counteroffensive in Mali on Monday after four days of French air strikes on their northern strongholds, seizing the central town of Diabaly and promising to drag France into a brutal Afghanistan-style war.


France, which has poured hundreds of troops into the capital Bamako in recent days, carried out more air strikes on Monday in the vast desert area seized last year by an Islamist alliance grouping al Qaeda's north African wing AQIM alongside Mali's home-grown MUJWA and Ansar Dine militant groups.


"France has opened the gates of hell for all the French," said Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesman for MUJWA, which has imposed strict sharia, Islamic law, in its northern fiefdom of Gao. "She has fallen into a trap which is much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia," he told Europe 1 radio.


Paris is determined to shatter Islamist domination of the north of its former colony, an area many fear could become a launchpad for terrorism attacks on the West and a base for coordination with al Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.


The French defense ministry said it aimed to deploy 2,500 soldiers in the West African state to bolster the Malian army and work with a force of 3,300 West African troops from the immediate region foreseen in a U.N.-backed intervention plan.


The United States, which has operated a counter-terrorism training program in the region, said it was sharing information with French forces and considering providing logistics, surveillance and airlift capability.


"We have a responsibility to go after al Qaeda wherever they are," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters heading with him on a week-long tour of European capitals.


As French aircraft bombarded mobile columns of Islamist fighters, other fighters launched a counter-attack to the southwest of recent clashes, dislodging government forces from the town of Diabaly, just 350 km (220 miles) northeast of Bamako. French and Malian troops attempting to retake the town were battling Islamists shouting 'Allahu akbar', residents said.


The rebels infiltrated the town overnight from the porous border region with Mauritania, home to AQIM camps housing well-equipped and trained foreign fighters. A spokesman for Ansar Dine said its fighters took Diabaly, working with AQIM members.


Dozens of Islamist fighters died on Sunday when French rockets hit a fuel depot and a customs house being used as a headquarters. The U.N. said an estimated 30,000 people had fled the fighting, joining more than 200,000 already displaced.


France, which has repeatedly said it has abandoned its role as the policeman of its former African colonies, convened a U.N. Security Council meeting for Monday to discuss the Mali crisis.


The European Union announced it would hold an extraordinary meeting of its foreign ministers in Brussels this week to discuss speeding up a EU training mission to help the Malian army and other direct support for the Bamako government.


French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France would do everything to ensure that regional African troops were deployed quickly to follow up on the French military action, which was launched to block a push southwards by the Islamist rebels.


"ORGANISED AND FANATICAL"


"We knew that there would be a counter-attack in the west because that is where the most determined, the most organized and fanatical elements are," French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France's BFM TV.


France has said its sudden intervention on Friday, responding to an urgent appeal from Mali's president, stopped the Islamists from seizing the dusty capital of Bamako.


President Francois Hollande says Operation Serval - named after an African wildcat - is solely aimed at supporting the 15-nation West African bloc ECOWAS which received U.N. backing in December for a military intervention to dislodge the rebels.


Hollande's robust intervention has won plaudits from Western leaders and has also shot down domestic criticism which portrayed him as spineless and indecisive.


Under pressure from Paris, regional states have said they hope to send in their forces this week. Military chiefs from ECOWAS nations will meet in Bamako on Tuesday but regional powerhouse Nigeria, which is due to lead the mission, has cautioned that training and deploying troops will take time.


Two decades of peaceful elections had earned Mali a reputation as a bastion of democracy in turbulent West Africa but that image unraveled after a military coup in March left a power vacuum for MNLA Tuareg rebels to seize the desert north.


MUJWA, an AQIM splinter group drawing support from Arabs and other ethnic groups, took control of Gao, the main city of the north, from the Tuaregs in June, shocking Mali's liberal Muslim majority with amputation of hands for theft under sharia.


Malian Foreign Minister Tyeman Coulibaly said the situation had become "untenable" in the north. "Every day, we were hearing about feet and hands being cut off, girls being raped, cultural patrimony being looted," he told the French weekly Paris Match.


ISLAMISTS DESTROY TIMBUKTU SHRINES


Last week's drive toward Bamako appeared to have been led by Ansar Dine, founded by renegade Tuareg separatist commander Iyad ag Ghali in his northern fiefdom of Kidal.


The group has said that the famed shrines of ancient desert trading town Timbuktu - a UNESCO world heritage site - were un-Islamic and idolatrous. Much of the area's religious heritage has now been destroyed, sparking international outrage.


France's intervention raises the threat for eight French hostages held by al Qaeda allies in the Sahara and for 30,000 French expatriates living in neighboring, mostly Muslim states.


Concerned about reprisals at home, France has tightened security at public buildings and on public transport.


However, top anti-terrorist judge, Marc Trevidic, played down the imminence of the risk, telling French media: "They're not very organized right now ... It could be a counter attack later on after the defeat on the ground. It's often like that."


Military analysts warn that if French action was not followed up by a robust deployment of ECOWAS forces, with logistical and financial support from NATO, then the whole U.N.-mandated Mali mission was unlikely to succeed.


"The French action was an ad-hoc measure. It's going to be a mess for a while, it depends on how quickly everyone can come on board," said Hussein Solomon, a professor at the University of the Free State, South Africa.


(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Brian Love and Catherine Bremer in Paris, Justyna Pawlak and Adrian Croft in Busssels and Louis Charbonneau in New York; writing by Daniel Flynn; editing by Pascal Fletcher)



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Facebook shares rise in buildup to mystery event, earnings






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s stock opened on Monday above $ 32 for the first time since July as anticipation about upcoming products and financial results underscored Wall Street’s renewed confidence in the online social network.


Facebook will on Tuesday host its first major press event at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, since its troubled initial public offering in May, triggering a guessing game among technology observers and online blogs about what it could unveil – everything from a smartphone to a search engine.






“There’s a lot of speculation. Nothing to me seems to be that certain,” Jefferies & Co analyst Brian Pitz said.


“If I were to bet, I’d think it was something that was ad-platform related. I’m not convinced on the phone,” said Pitz, citing previous comments by Facebook’s leaders including CEO Mark Zuckerberg that making a smartphone would be the “wrong strategy” for Facebook.


In an email to reporters last week, Facebook invited the media to “come and see what we’re building” without providing details.


Some analysts said the stock’s recent gains – shares are up roughly 17 percent since the start of the year – may have more to do with the company’s upcoming fourth-quarter financial results, slated for January 30.


“The stock is up because they have driven a dramatic increase in the ad load of their mobile app which is giving investors hope that they exceeded expectations,” BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said.


Shares were down about 1.3 percent to $ 31.30 in mid-afternoon trading.


The world’s No.1 social network with 1 billion users, Facebook became the first U.S. company to debut on stock markets with a value of more than $ 100 billion. Its value subsequently plunged by more than 50 percent on mounting concerns about slowing revenue growth and the challenges of making money as users shift from personal computers to mobile devices.


Facebook surprised Wall Street in the third quarter by announcing that mobile ads accounted for 14 percent of its total ad revenue. Some analysts expect the company to report further growth in its nascent mobile ad business for the fourth quarter.


Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, has said that mobile is the “most misunderstood aspect” of Facebook. But he has repeatedly poured cold water on rumors that Facebook would build its own smartphone to compete against Apple Inc’s iPhone and smartphones based on Google Inc’s Android operating system.


During an on-stage interview at a conference in September, Zuckerberg said that he believed search could be a ripe area of growth for Facebook.


“Facebook is really uniquely positioned to answer a lot of the questions that people have,” Zuckerberg said, such as finding a good restaurant or learning more about a job opportunity.


Still, many technology observers believe that Facebook is more likely to improve the search capabilities within Facebook than to develop a full-fledged search engine that indexes all the Web’s content and competes head-on with search leader Google.


Among the other items that technology blogs and analysts speculate might be unveiled on Tuesday were new standalone apps for Apple’s iPad tablet, new features to display video ads and even a new wing of corporate headquarters.


Some cautioned that expectations of a game-changing new product were likely to cause disappointment.


“There’s no way they’re announcing anything that has financial impact, or they wouldn’t do it now, they’d wait two weeks,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, citing Facebook’s upcoming earnings.


“Why would you announce something that has a financial impact during the quiet period?,” he said.


(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Paul Simao)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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