Archive - 2012

Van Halen is postponing some dates on its summer concert tour.

Everyone in Hollywood wants to be a multi-hyphenate, right? Everyone wants to show they can do it all. A key figure in that tradition is the model-turned-actor. Maybe they wanted to act but had to take modeling gigs first; maybe they modeled first but wanted to prove they were more than just a pretty face.

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc starts trading on Friday after having raised more than $16 billion in the world's largest technology IPO. Its splashy debut is the culmination of eight years of breakneck growth, as it emerged from Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room to become the No. 1 social network, linking nearly 1 in 7 people on the planet. Here are key facts about what could be the second-largest IPO in U.S. history, exceeded only by Visa Inc's. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, one of the three lead underwriters on the Facebook Inc IPO, has increased the number of Facebook shares it will allow advisers to allocate to each client account. The firm previously set a cap of 500 shares per retail client, but e-mailed advisers late on Thursday afternoon that it had increased the limit to 5,000 shares, according to two sources familiar with the situation, who declined to be named because they are not permitted to speak to the press. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors who managed to buy Facebook Inc shares ahead of the No. 1 social network's initial public offering might want to think twice before "flipping" them. Brokerages can impose restrictions on participating in future IPOs for those trying to profit from market debuts. Some serial flippers could even face lifetime bans. Strong demand for the third-largest initial share sale in U.S. history has fueled anticipation of a big pop in Facebook's stock price once it begins trading on Friday. [ID:nL1E8GH5U4] Only Visa Inc and General Motors Co had bigger IPOs. ...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has resumed construction work on an experimental light water reactor (ELWR) in a move that could extend its capacity to produce more material for nuclear weapons, website 38North reported on Thursday. Based on April 30 satellite images, work halted in December at the reactor had now re-started, said the website (http://38north.org), run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University and former U.S. State Department official Joel Wit. ...

A fire burning near a scenic canyon in northern Colorado has grown from about 1.5 square miles to more than 11 square miles amid erratic winds kicked up by dry thunderstorms.

"American Idol" finalist Joshua Ledet won't be belting it out on this season's final showdown.

A company that bought the rights to convert Wayne Newton's Las Vegas home into a museum is suing the entertainer over allegations that he unreasonably delayed the project to ensure it never opens.

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook Inc is set to raise up to $18.4 billion in its IPO and become the first U.S. company to be worth more than $100 billion at its debut, as investors bet on a big pop in the stock when it begins trading on the Nasdaq on Friday. Frenzied demand, especially from individual investors hoping to buy into an Internet juggernaut that touches hundreds of millions of people every day, is expected to drive Facebook well above its initial public offering price of $38 a share, which was already at the top end of its target of $34 to $38. ...

Over at Nieman Lab, Adrienne LaFrance has an interesting interview with Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall about his efforts to “formally deconstruct” the idea that TPM is primarily a website. It’s a good, short look at one of the original Web journalism entrepreneurs as he transitions his organization to a greater emphasis on mobile and video. Which,...

Newly elected president orders 30 per cent pay cut for his ministers amid calls to renegotiate EU fiscal pact.

Newly elected president orders 30 per cent pay cut for his ministers amid calls to renegotiate EU fiscal pact.

The mainstream corporate media spends a lot of time telling you about crap that doesn't matter. Then there's the stuff that does matter which you hardly hear about at all.

This is one of those stories. Hugely important, yet, almost inexplicably, barely reported on.

Happily HuffPo's Dan Froomkin --- who Tweeted it out this week by noting: "Hey! Did you just feel the campaign finance firmament move? I think Karl Rove did." --- has at least been staying on top of it...

See the rest of Froomkin's piece for more very instructive info on this.

Now the Rovians have a remarkable ability to slither through newly found loopholes to ensure they are able to continue not doing the right thing when it comes to gaming our embarrassingly obscene campaign finance system. Moreover, election law professor Rick Hasen expects the "stay request to now end up before the Supreme Court, where the outcome may be different."

Nonetheless, this is a very positive development for those who believe in transparency, particularly in the dark infamy of our post-Citizens United world, and I'm amazed, on one hand, that this story isn't being discussed more by the media. On the other hand, given that the corporate media is actually the top beneficiary of the Citizens United ruling, perhaps I shouldn't be so amazed.

The glowing praise of the racist "Stop and Frisk" policy by the NYPD and city officials and the fuzzy math statistics that claim vastly reduced crime weren't enough to stop a federal judge today from granting class-action status in a lawsuit against the NYPD that claims the practice violates the constitutional rights of blacks and Hispanics.

Maybe it was the Jateik Reed video or the facts that revealed, among other things, that more young black men were stopped and frisked by police last year than actually live in the city, according to an analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The New York Times obtained Judge Shira Scheindlin's opinion, which stated that the evidence presented showed that the central tenets that make up the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy led to many illegal stops. Judge Scheindlin writes:

It is rather audacious of the NYPD to argue that if it were possible to protect "the right of people to be secure in their persons" from unlawful searches and seizures by the NYPD, then the legislature would already have done so and judicial intervention would therefore be futile. Indeed, it is precisely when the political branches violate the individual rights of minorities that "more searching judicial enquiry" is appropriate.

(Emphasis is Judge Scheindlin's.) The NYPD is on track to break last year's record of 601,055 stops (that's 1,900 a day) in 2012.