Family Feud: Tense Thanksgiving for Facebook and George Takei

Facebook’s increasingly fraught relationship with small businesses just got more complicated thanks to celebrity user George Takei: The former Star Trek star will publish a book with a chapter taking on Facebook’s controversial handling of page posts, just in time for the holidays.

Takei, whose page has nearly 3 million followers on the social network, says in a Facebook post that his forthcoming book Oh Myyy will include an entire chapter devoted to Facebook’s filtering of page posts using an algorithm called EdgeRank and its parallel practice of charging page owners to reduce EdgeRank filtering. Takei made the announcement while replying to another Facebook user who wrote a jeremiad against the filtering. Takei has been outspoken about his frustration with the filtering, which essentially forces him to pay Facebook if he wants to reach all of his own fans.

“I am writing a chapter in my book Oh Myyy about Edgeranking and what I have done to try and achieve higher engagement,” Takei writes. “I am curious as to why interactivity rates on my page appear to fluctuate so much when I have done nothing different. I have not been pressured to use Promoted Pages [advertising], but I have had to take active steps to get fans to add my page to their ‘Interests’ so that it has a higher likelihood of appearing in their newsfeed.”

Takei’s book is slated for release sometime around Thanksgiving, keeping alive a controversial issue that just won’t die. Earlier this fall, the blog Dangerous Minds and the author Ryan Holiday both published rants accusing Facebook of aggressively filtering posts from Facebook pages in order to get owners of the pages to pony up for advertising to escape the filtering. Facebook told our sister site Ars Technica that, regardless of whether the author has paid for promotion, a post can be suppressed if readers fail to interact with the post or if they respond negatively.

This is a dicey but important issue for Facebook. Businesses — as well as groups like nonprofits and celebrities like Takei — join the social network by creating pages, and they speak to customers and fans by posting to those pages, which users may follow by clicking “like.” A typical page post is only shown to around 15 percent of the people who follow the page; Facebook filters it from the news feeds of the rest based, it says, on relevance. Paying to get around this blockade with so-called “promoted posts” is a key, entry-level form of Facebook advertising, used to rope mom-and-pop merchants into doing business with the social network.

Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Sometimes the system backfires: Many small businesses feel extorted by Facebook, particularly after the company recently made it easier to see when a post is filtered and to buy an ad. Publishers who see their Facebook fan base grow while reach remains stagnant can’t help but wonder if Facebook is simply trying to sell more ads. At the same time, as more businesses join Facebook, the social network has a duty to users to make sure promotional business spam doesn’t flood news feeds.

It’s a complex and wonky issue, one that Facebook might reasonably expect might fade away into confusing arguments involving talk of algorithms, analytics, reach, and viral lift. Except it’s not going to fade away with Sulu from Star Trek beaming his detailed analysis of the situation into people’s Kindles, iPhones and iPads this holiday season along with cute animal pictures. Lending celebrity cred to the topic Facebook filtering is certainly a boon to advocates of internet transparency, but, if Takei’s past frustration is anything to go buy, it will be no gift to Facebook.

Read More..

James Bond returns: 007 things to know before seeing “Skyfall’

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Fifty years after Sean Connery traveled to Jamaica in “Dr. No,” James Bond is back for the 23rd time in “Skyfall,” an instant classic in the Bond canon and a breath of fresh air for the franchise.

Bond has been on hiatus for close to four years, leaving some with the sour taste of “Quantum of Solace” – a bloated, action-heavy film many would rather forget. Daniel Craig as Bond seemed so promising in “Casino Royale,” his first film as the trigger-happy secret agent, where we found him playing cards, swilling martinis and bedding Eva Green.

Now Bond returns Thursday in Sam Mendes‘ “Skyfall,” joining forces with some old allies (Judi Dench as M) and new friends (Ben Whishaw as Q and Ralph Fiennes as a government official).

For a franchise celebrating its golden anniversary, it’s hard to imagine 007 could still surprise, but Mendes has issued a full-blown reboot, and TheWrap is here to help you catch up with seven things even the biggest Bond fan should know before seeing “Skyfall.”

Who got rid of the Bond girls?

When you think of Bond, you think of scantily clad women and passionate sex scenes – Ursula Andress traipsing out of the water in her bikini. Denise Richards in a midriff-baring tank top. Green and Craig in a hotel in Montenegro.

This time around, Bond girls are left on the sidelines. Berenice Marlohe appears briefly for instant salivation. But aside from Naomie Harris, the Bond girls play smaller roles, and, to everyone’s surprise, are mostly clothed – no bikinis, no lingerie. Just one shower scene in the shadows.

Craig spends more time with his shirt off than all of the women put together. Eat your heart out ladies.

Where are the exploding pens?

Every Bond fan alive has gadget-envy. From the jet pack in “Thunderball” to the stun-gun cell phone in “Tomorrow Never Dies,” 007 always has an array of toys at his disposal.

No more. The more modern society gets, the less Bond has to work with. Facing the most dangerous cyber terrorist in the world, Q outfits the secret agent with little more than a gun (indeed, a special gun) and a radio.

Radio? Yes, radio.

Is James Bond too old for the job?

When we first see 007, he seems the same chiseled, debonair exemplar of British fortitude. Yet we soon discover much has changed in the world of the 00s. It appears Bond dies a few minutes into the movie, but he resurfaces as a scruffy drunk, taking shots of booze at a bar on a tropical island. This Bond would rather fall asleep drunk at a bar than go home to his gorgeous mate.

When Bond is subjected to a full physical and mental evaluation, his fitness is failing, his aim askew and his mental state muddled.

The government questions his return as a 00, leaving his future up in the air.

When did the villains stop caring about money?

MI6, the legendary British intelligence outfit, appears in even worse shape. It has long been home to some of the world’s best agents, willing to go undercover at a moment’s notice in service to queen and country.

Yet on Bond’s 50th anniversary, its strategies are antiquated, and its field agents, ready as ever to engage in fire fights, appear defeated. Long gone are villains like Goldfinger (“Goldfinger”) and crime syndicates like Janus (“Goldeneye”). Cyber-crime is the new danger, and its perpetrators don’t want money, they want chaos.

What’s a secret agent to do when nerds rule the world?

Is this a Bond villain to remember?

How is it that only the Coen Brothers and Mendes recognize Javier Bardem’s talent as a villain? After his chilling portrayal of Anton Chiguhr in “No Country for Old Men,” the Coen Brother’s Oscar-winning Western, Bardem returns to his evil ways as Raoul Silva, a former MI6 agent hell bent on revenge.

His hair is blonde, his accent is spine-tingling and his plan pure evil. He doesn’t fit the typical Bond stereotype. He’s not Russian, he’s not wealthy and he’s not affiliated with a larger organization. He’s a lone wolf.

He’s also the best Bond villain in years, leaving us to wonder: who will they recruit next?

Does the song remain the same?

For those living under a rock, Adele sings the “Skyfall” theme song, bringing a little extra cultural cache and British bluster to the film. It’s been years since a Bond movie used the classic opening, replete with fake blood, gunshots and a roving spotlight, but “Skyfall” takes us into new territory – underwater.

While plenty of Bond openings have featured fire and sexy silhouettes, Mendes chooses aquatic optics and a submerged graveyard. Though the scene will divide critics, the song itself shows off Adele’s powerful voice. Considering some of the recent entries – remember Madonna’s “Die Another Day”? – this is progress.

Did Christopher Nolan inspire Mendes?

James Bond is one of the most famous characters in film history, but “Skyfall” appears heavily influenced by Nolan’s Batman films. In keeping with the Craig-led Bonds (which began one year after “Batman Begins”), “Skyfall” is darker than earlier films, both literally (a night scene in Shanghai) and thematically (the constant fear of an attack at home).

When M makes a speech to Parliament, she proclaims the world scarier than ever because our enemies are now in the shadows – a choice Nolanism. The villains’ yearning for chaos rather than financial reward echoes Liam Neeson’s League of Shadows, Heath Ledger’s Joker and Tom Hardy’s Bane.

The new Bond also resembles the new Batman, a man struggling with his role in a changed world, an outcast who only wants to serve his country.

Believed dead, he only returns to England because of an attack on British soil.

Upon his return, Bond is now a lone vigilante a la the caped crusader, standing on a roof waiting for his next move – or perhaps the bat signal.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Global Update: Polio Eradication Efforts in Pakistan Focus on Pashtuns

Michael Kamber for The New York Times

Polio will never be eradicated in Pakistan until a way is found to persuade poor Pashtuns to embrace the vaccine, according to a study released by the World Health Organization.

A survey of 1,017 parents of young children found that 41 percent had never heard of polio and 11 percent refused to vaccinate their children against it. The survey was done in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and the only big city in the world where polio persists; it was published in the agency’s November bulletin.

Parents from poor families “cited lack of permission from family elders,” said Dr. Anita Zaidi, who teaches pediatrics at the Aga Khan University in Karachi. Some rich parents also disdained the vaccine, saying it was “harmful or unnecessary,” she added.

Pashtuns account for 75 percent of Pakistan’s polio cases even though they are only 15 percent of the population. Wealthy children are safer because the virus travels in sewage, and their neighborhoods may have covered sewers and be less flood-prone.

Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in next-door Afghanistan, where polio has also never been wiped out. Most Taliban fighters are Pashtun, and some Taliban threatened to kill vaccinators earlier this year. Two W.H.O. vaccinators were shot in Karachi in July.

Rumors persist that the vaccine is a plot to sterilize Muslims. But the eradication drive is recruiting Pashtuns as vaccinators and asking prominent religious leaders from various sects to make videos endorsing the vaccine.

Read More..

News Analysis: For Obama, Housing Policy Presents Second-Term Headaches

A second-term president may be just the person to tackle America’s housing problems.

When President Obama first came into office, home prices were crashing, foreclosures were soaring and the previous Bush administration had just initiated the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed entities that agree to repay mortgages if the original borrower defaults.

With the market in shambles in 2008, the Obama administration pursued a tentative housing policy, for the most part avoiding big moves that might have further weakened the housing market or banks. Eventually, there were some bolder initiatives, like the national mortgage settlement with big banks as well as the Treasury Department’s later aid programs for homeowners.

But as President Obama’s first administration comes to an end, the government is still deeply embedded in the mortgage market. In the third quarter, various government entities backstopped 92 percent of all new residential mortgages, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a publication that focuses on the home loan industry.

Mr. Obama’s economic team has consistently said it wants the housing market to work without significant government support. But it has taken few actual steps to advance that idea.

“I think Obama is absolutely committed to reducing the government’s role,” said Thomas Lawler, a former chief economist at Fannie Mae and founder of Lawler Economic and Housing Consulting, an industry analysis firm. “But no one’s yet found a format to do that.”

Housing policy is hard to tackle because so many people have benefited from the status quo. The entire real estate system — the banks, the agents, the home buyers — all depend on a market that provides fixed-rate, 30-year mortgages that can be easily refinanced when interest rates drop. That sort of loan is rare outside of the United States. And any effort to overhaul housing and the mortgage market could eventually reduce the amount of such mortgages in the country, angering many and creating a political firestorm.

In other words, the best person to fundamentally change how housing works may be a president who won’t be running for office again.

Most immediately, the housing market has to be strong enough to deal with a government pullback. Some analysts think it’s ready. “I think the housing recovery is far enough along that they can start winding down Fannie and Freddie,” said Phillip L. Swagel at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, who served as assistant secretary for economic policy under Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.

The administration can take smaller steps first. Mr. Lawler, the housing economist, thinks the government could start to reduce the maximum amount that it will guarantee for Fannie and Freddie loans. In some areas, like parts of the Northeast and California, it is as high as $625,000. Before the financial crisis, it was essentially capped at $417,000.

The big question is whether the private sector — banks and investors that buy bonds backed with mortgages — will pick up the slack when the government eases out of the market. If they don’t, the supply of mortgages could fall and house prices could weaken.

Banks say their appetite depends on how new rules for mortgages turn out. In setting such regulations, some tough choices have to be made.

The new rules will effectively map the riskiness of various types of mortgages. In determining that, regulators will look at the features of the loans and the borrowers income. Banks say they are unlikely to hold loans deemed risky, and their lobbyists are pressing for legal protection on the safer ones, called qualified mortgages.

The temptation will be to make the definition of what constitutes a qualified mortgage as broad as possible, to ensure that the banks lend to a wide range of borrowers. But regulators concerned with the health of the banks won’t want a system that incentivizes institutions to make potentially risky loans.

One set of qualified mortgage regulations, being written by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, could be finalized as early as January. Other regulators like the Federal Reserve are expected to take longer in finalizing their mortgage rules. Resolving the conflict between mortgage availability and bank strength may ultimately depend the person who replaces Timothy F. Geithner as Treasury secretary. Mr. Geithner is stepping down at the end of Mr. Obama’s first term.

The Obama administration faces other daunting decisions.

One is how to deal with the considerable number of troubled mortgages still in the financial system. Banks might be reluctant to make new loans until they have a better idea of the ultimate amount of losses on the old loans. “If you don’t ever deal with these problems, you may never get to where you want to go,” said Mr. Lawler, the housing economist.

To help tackle that issue, the new administration might decide to make its mortgage relief programs more aggressive. It might even aim for more loan modifications, writing down the value of the mortgages to make them easier to pay. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has effectively blocked such write-downs on the vast amount of loans those entities have guaranteed.

A new Obama administration may move to change the agency’s stance on write-downs, perhaps by replacing its acting director, Edward DeMarco. If that happened, it would be a sign that the White House has a taste for more radical housing actions. The agency declined to comment.

Then there’s what to do with the Federal Housing Administration, another government entity that has backstopped a huge amount of mortgages since the financial crisis. The housing administration was set up to focus on lower-income borrowers, and it backs loans that have very low down payments. Its share of the market has grown from where it was before the crisis. The F.H.A. accounted for 13 percent of the market in the third quarter, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

The new administration has to decide whether it wants the F.H.A. to continue doing as much business. The risk is that a big pull back by the F.H.A. could reduce the availability of mortgages to lower-income borrowers. Banks almost certainly won’t want to write loans with minuscule down payments because they’re considered riskier.

Ultimately, housing policy comes down to one question: Which borrowers should get the most subsidies?

Right now, the government largesse encompasses a wide swath of borrowers. But most analysts believe government support should be focused on lower-income borrowers.

“We will know that the Obama administration is serious about housing finance reform when it comes up with a proposal for affordable housing,” said Mr. Swagel, the University of Maryland professor.

Read More..

Time to bury two election myths

With the election over and the votes counted, we now have data to refute a couple of persistent electoral myths -- one involving economics, the other polling.

Myth One: “No president has been reelected with an unemployment rate higher than ... .” This hoary notion never made much sense. Put the unemployment rate and the incumbent’s vote percentage on a graph and you can immediately see that the two bear almost no relationship to each other.

Two main reasons explain this. One is that the unemployment rate sometimes goes up when times are getting better and down when things get worse. As an economy improves, more people start looking for work, sometimes leading to a temporary increase in the unemployment rate; conversely, when things get worse and discouraged workers drop out of the market, the rate can drop.

LIVE ANALYSIS: The Times breaks down Election Day

The other reason is that voters respond much more to the direction of change than they do to the status quo. In other words, whether voters perceive the economy as getting better or worse matters more than the economy’s absolute level. And the number of jobs created in the economy provides a much better measure than the unemployment rate.

Myth Two: “In an equally divided country, self-identified Democrats and Republicans should be roughly equal in polls.” This misconception launched a thousand debates over whether published polls were “skewed” in favor of Democrats. It also caused some Republican pollsters to fool themselves -- and presumably their clients -- by weighting poll results to match a preconceived idea of what the balance between the two parties “should” be.

In the end, the election returns proved them wrong. As exit polls showed, voters who identified themselves as Democrats outnumbered those who identified as Republicans 38% to 32% this year, about the same margin that the major pre-election polls showed.

Asking voters which party they identify with is one of the most important parts of any poll. Pollsters use party identification to analyze other data, looking at how self-identified Democrats and Republicans view issues differently. And, of course, party identification powerfully predicts voting behavior. Republicans who weighted their polls to narrow the partisan gap ended up producing results that made Mitt Romney and other GOP candidates appear to be in better shape than they were.

PHOTOS: America goes to the polls

Of course, those pollsters didn’t set out to fool themselves. They were trying to solve a riddle: If Democrats and Republicans are close to parity in the results -- President Obama ended up beating Romney by about 2 percentage points in the popular vote -- how can Democrats have a six-point edge in party identification?

The answer is actually pretty simple. Over the last decade, a significant number of people who vote for Republicans have stopped identifying themselves as Republicans. That includes a lot of ardent conservatives. Instead of calling themselves Republicans, those voters now identify as independents. No similar movement has taken place among Democrats.

As a result, the group of voters who identify as independent no longer sits at the center of the political spectrum. Instead, independents heavily tilt toward the Republicans. Polls that take those independents into account and then weight their results to show more Republicans are, in effect, double counting.

The other result of that shift: A Democrat no longer has to win independents to gain a majority. Indeed, Obama lost self-identified independents by five points, 45% to 50%, according to the exit polls. He beat Romney 56% to 41% among voters who identified themselves as ideologically “moderate.”

PHOTOS: Paul Ryan's past

Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

david.lauter@latimes.com

twitter.com/@DavidLauter

Read More..

Foxconn 'Falling Short' of iPhone 5 Demand

On Wednesday, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou publicly acknowledged the difficulties Foxconn is facing in producing the tremendous quantities required for Apple’s latest iPhone.

“It’s not easy to make the iPhones. We are falling short of meeting the huge demand,” Gou told reporters following a business forum, according to a Reuters report.

Apple saw blockbuster iPhone sales this past quarter with the introduction of the iPhone 5, and that demand is likely to continue through the holiday season, bolstered by the fastest iPhone rollout schedule to date. “We have a feature-rich new industrial design available to a larger audience of customers because of the number of carriers,” Forrester analyst Charles Golvin told Wired. “That would lead me to believe that there’s meaningfully higher demand than the iPhone 4 or 4S.”

There are also manufacturing challenges with producing the phone itself.

“The issues with the new iPhone stem from the fact it is thinner than prior versions, and any time you reduce the thickness you’ve got much less room to work with and you increase the likelihood for manufacturing error,” IHS senior principal analyst Tom Dinges told Wired via e-mail. “The manufacturing process for the iPhone is still relatively high on labor as opposed to automation, which also increases the likelihood for manufacturing issues when you shrink the size of the device.”

One of the bigger problems plaguing the new iPhone is its aluminum rear plate, which is prone to chips and scratches because aluminum is a softer metal. Also of note: The iPhone 5 is the first iPhone to have the touch panel integrated with the display components (referred to as an in-cell display). Produced solely by LG Display to start with, this new Retina Display panel has definitely been a bottleneck for iPhone production.

“When you combine the issues with meeting the quality standards with a very strong global rollout it becomes a real challenge for the manufacturing partners to keep up,” Dinges said.

Read More..

War Widow’s Lawsuit Says Nat Geo, Fox Depicted Dead Husband’s Body, Aired Family Photo

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – An Army staff sergeant‘s widow says in a lawsuit against National Geographic and Fox that a documentary from the companies depicted her husband’s dead body and showed a private family photo she believes was taken from his laptop after he died.

The suit seeks unspecified damages and to ban Nat Geo and Fox from using military family members’ images, names or likenesses for commercial purposes without their permission.

Nat Geo declined to comment.

Donnice Roberts, of Carthage, Texas, has two children with Staff Sergeant Kevin Casey Roberts. He was killed by an IED in 2008 during what was to be his last mission in Afghanistan, after two tours in Iraq. He enlisted two months after the September 11 2001 attacks, and received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

A year after he died, according to the lawsuit, she learned from another service member that he had seen a documentary called “Inside: Afghan ER” on the Armed Forces Network, broadcast in German, that depicted her husband’s dead body. It also featured a family photo from a trip to Disney World that she believes was taken from his laptop.

“Mrs. Roberts was very disturbed that her image, and more importantly, her children’s image would be broadcast around the world without their knowledge or permission,” the lawsuit said. “This is particularly true given the fanaticism associated with jihadist determined to kill Americans, including American women and children.”

“Moreover, Mrs. Roberts has fears and concerns that her minor children are depicted as the children of a warrior in the war on terror, which is fought by fanatic, radical individuals who have shown a propensity and desire to kill Americans, including women and children,” the lawsuit adds.

The lawsuit said the lawsuit was produced and distributed by the National Geographic Society and further promoted and distributed by Fox Cable Networks, Inc. and Fox Entertainment Group, Inc. through the cable network NatGeo and affiliated websites. The suit said it aired worldwide.

Roberts said when she contacted National Geographic Society seeking a copy of the photo, she was told she would need to sign a waiver. She refused.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this story)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

A Collective Effort to Save Decades of Research at N.Y.U.

The calls started coming in late on Tuesday and early Wednesday: offers of dry ice, freezer space, coolers. By the end of Thursday there were dozens more: A researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College would clear 1,000 tanks to save threatened zebra fish; another, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, promised to replace some genetically altered mice that were lost; and a doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia even offered take over entire experiments, to keep them going.

As hurricane-driven waters surged into New York University research buildings in Kips Bay, on the East Side of Manhattan, investigators in New York and around the world jumped on the phone to offer assistance — executing a reverse Noah’s ark operation, to rescue lab animals and other assets from a flooding vessel.

“I’ve had 43 people who have offered to help so far, and some of them are direct competitors,” said Gordon Fishell, associate director of the N.Y.U. Neuroscience Institute, who lost more than 5,000 genetically altered mice when storm waters surged the night of Oct. 30, cutting off power. “It’s just been unbelievable,” he said. “It really buoys my spirits and my lab’s.”

Staff members at N.Y.U. worked around the clock to preserve research materials, running in and out of darkened buildings without elevator service, hauling dry ice and other supplies up anywhere from 2 to more than 15 floors.

The university’s medical center also got instant help, from almost every major research institution in the area.

The response reflects large shifts in the way that science is conducted over the past generation or so. Individual labs always compete to be first, but researchers increasingly share materials that are enormously expensive and time-consuming to reproduce. The loss of a single cell line or genetically altered animal can slow progress for years in some areas of biomedical research.

“We are totally dependent on each other in the life sciences now, for a very large number of cell lines and extracts, research animals and unique chemical tools and antibodies that might not have backup copies anywhere in the world, or in very few places,” said Dr. Steven Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard. “Losing any of these tools tears a significant hole in the entire field.”

Danny Reinberg, a professor of biochemistry at N.Y.U.’s medical school, has studied genetics for 30 years, accumulating valuable mice strains and stocks of extracts from cell nuclei that would be extremely difficult to replace. The extracts must be stored at minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dr. Reinberg said he lost all of his mice: nine strains, including more than 1,000 animals that died in the storm surge. But he managed to save all of the cell extracts by moving some containers into freezers at N.Y.U. labs that weren’t affected and others to the Rockefeller, Columbia and Cornell medical centers, each of which cleared space, he said.

“We were able to save many things; it was just phenomenal to get that kind of help,” said Dr. Reinberg, whose house in New Jersey has had no power.

“Later in the week, at a Starbucks, I could finally download all my e-mail, and there were messages from people at the University of Pennsylvania and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, asking how they could help us re-establish the mouse lines we lost,” he said.

Some scientists have become interdependent because their students, who develop a specialty in specific tissues or animals, often move among labs. Research projects sometimes draw on experiments or analyses the students worked on at more than one place.

One researcher working in Dr. Fishell’s lab was formerly a student of Dr. Stewart Anderson of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who sent Dr. Fishell a text message on Wednesday to offer help. “I told him that even if it costs money, we’re happy to keep experiments rolling, if we’re able to,” Dr. Anderson said.

By late Thursday, freezer space in minus-112-degree units was extremely tight in the city. So was dry ice.

Susan Zolla-Pazner, director of AIDS research at the Manhattan Veterans Affairs Medical Center, had lost power in her 18th-floor lab in the department’s building at 23rd Street and First Avenue. She finally hired a company to haul her 20 freezers-full of specimens, for safekeeping.

“We spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday hauling 1,300 pounds of dry ice up to the 18th floor, using the stairs, to stabilize the freezers first,” said Dr. Zolla-Pazner, who is also a professor of pathology at N.Y.U. School of Medicine. “And the dry ice people would only take cash. I have about 25 to 30 people working for me, and everyone was out there on 23rd Street, reaching into their pockets to get what we needed. It was a herculean and heroic effort on the part of everyone here, and that is the story that needs to be told.”

Read More..

Investors on Wall St. React Nervously

Henny Ray Abrams/Associated Press

A trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. A day after the election, the outlook of continued divided government in Washington and little prospect for compromise unnerved traders.

A one-two punch of worries about the post-election picture in the United States and economic weakness in Europe sent stocks reeling Wednesday, with major indices falling more than 2 percent. Some industry sectors, like finance and managed care, fell substantially more than that over fears they would be hurt by tougher regulations and other adverse policies in President Obama’s second term.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index recorded its worst performance since June, falling 33.86 to 1,394.53, while the Dow Jones industrial average fell 312.95 to 12,932.73. It was the Dow’s first close below the psychologically important 13,000 level since August.

Shares also came under pressure after Barclays sharply reduced its year-end target for the S.&P. 500 to 1,325 from 1,395 — 5 percent below where the broad-based index closed Wednesday.

“Within the equity market in the near term, we believe there will be nowhere to hide,” said Barry Knapp, chief United States equity strategist at Barclays. “In the near term, we generally suggest cutting risk.”

Many market strategists expect that the market will remain volatile between now and mid-January. If Congress and the president cannot come up with a plan to cut the deficit, hundreds of billions in Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire at the beginning of 2013 while automatic spending cuts will sharply cut the defense budget and other programs.

Known as the fiscal cliff, this simultaneous combination of sweeping reductions in government spending and tax increases could push the economy into recession in 2013, economists fear.

In the wake of President Obama’s re-election, companies in some sectors, like hospitals and technology, will see a short-term pop, said Tobias Levkovich, chief United States equity strategist with Citi. Other areas, like financial services as well as coal and mining, are likely to be hurt, Mr. Levkovich said.

Indeed, coal companies were among the worst hit Wednesday. The coal industry is particularly sensitive to new environmental regulations, while Mr. Obama has pushed in the past for more investments in renewables and alternative energy sources that could reduce coal demand in the long-term.

Shares of Alpha Natural Resources, a coal giant, were down 12.2 percent to $8.45, while Arch Coal was off 12.5 percent to $7.58.

But HCA Holdings, a hospital operator, jumped 9.4 percent, to $33.85 a share. As a result of Mr. Obama’s victory, Goldman Sachs said it upgraded its rating on HCA to buy from neutral, and raised its price target to $39 from $31. It also raised price targets for Tenet Healthcare and Community Health Systems, although both are still rated neutral.

Goldman downgraded shares of Humana, a leading managed care company, to sell, and its shares fell 7.9 percent to $70.16. Goldman warned that Humana and other managed care providers could be hurt as health care reform moves forward, especially new rules for health insurers that become effective in 2014.

Shares of Wall Street firms and big banks were also hard hit. While Mitt Romney favored substantially altering the Dodd-Frank financial regulations passed in the summer of 2010 and easing many regulations, President Obama has supported stricter rules for the financial services industry. In addition, one of the industry’s fiercest critics, Elizabeth Warren, was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts, unseating her Republican opponent, Scott Brown.

Bank of America fell 7.1 percent to $9.23 while Goldman Sachs dropped 6.6 percent to $117.98 and JPMorgan Chase sank 5.6 percent to $40.48.

Read More..

Death toll rises to three in Fresno chicken plant shooting

Two more people have died after a worker opened fire at a Fresno chicken plant Tuesday morning, authorities said, including the suspected gunman.

The Fresno County coroner's office said Tuesday afternoon that the death toll stood at three and included suspect Lawrence Jones, 42. Police described one of the victims as a 32-year-old man who was pronounced dead at the Valley Protein plant; no information was immediately available about the second victim.

Jones, a "discharged parolee" who had worked at the plant for about 14 months, clocked in to work shortly before 5 a.m. and at about 8:30 "pulled out a handgun and began opening fire" near a cold storage section of the building, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said.

Officers found Jones outside the building with an apparent gunshot wound to the head, Dyer said. They also found a 32-year-old woman who had been shot in the lower back.

Three men were found inside: the 32-year-old who was pronounced dead at the scene, a 34-year-old shot in the head and a 28-year-old shot in the neck. The victims were all taken to a local hospital, along with Jones.

Dyer said investigators still weren't sure what prompted Jones to open fire, but said a coworker told authorities Jones "did not appear himself when he came in to work." Hours later, Dyer said, he pulled out a gun and started shooting.
"I heard pops," said Yeprem Barbarian, who passed the plant during the shooting on his way to his tire shop. "I thought it was tires. Then I walked in, turned on the TV and saw the police cars and sirens showing up."

Officers were searching Jones' Fresno home to ensure there were no other victims, Dyer said.

No one answered a telephone number listed for the plant, also known as Apple Valley Farms Inc. All calls instead went to an answering machine.

"Unfortunately, due to an emergency we are closed for the day," the message said.

Read More..