Facebook's IPO one of world's largest

A Facebook log is displayed on the screen of an iPad, Wednesday, May 16, 2012 in New York. Facebook's initial public offering is one of the most hotly anticipated in years. The company is likely to have an estimated market valuation of $100 billion when its shares begin trading on the Nasdaq stock market on Friday. (AP Photo/James H. Collins)

A Facebook log is displayed on the screen of an iPad, Wednesday, May 16, 2012 in New York. Facebook's initial public offering is one of the most hotly anticipated in years. The company is likely to have an estimated market valuation of $100 billion when its shares begin trading on the Nasdaq stock market on Friday. (AP Photo/James H. Collins)

The Facebook logo appears on a display inside the NASDAQ Marketsite in Times Square Thursday, May 17, 2012, in New York. Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on Thursday, at the high end of its expected range. If extra shares reserved to cover additional demand are sold as part of the transaction, Facebook Inc. and its early investors stand to reap as much as $18.4 billion from the IPO. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

News about Facebook's IPO moves across the Dow Jones ticker in Times Square Thursday, May 17, 2012 in New York. Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on Thursday, at the high end of its expected range. If extra shares reserved to cover additional demand are sold as part of the transaction, Facebook Inc. and its early investors stand to reap as much as $18.4 billion from the IPO. The IPO values the company at around $104 billion, slightly more than Amazon.com, and well above well-known corporations such as Disney and Kraft. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

(AP) ? In one of the largest initial public offerings of stock ever, Facebook said Thursday that it is raising at least $16 billion for itself and its early investors in a transaction that values the world's definitive online social network at $104 billion.

It's a big windfall for a company that began eight years ago with no way to make money.

Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on Thursday, at the top of expectations. The company is selling just a portion of its shares as part of the offering. The $38 price means all of its shares will be worth about $104 billion, giving the company a market value higher than Amazon.com and other well-known companies such as Kraft, Disney and McDonald's.

Facebook's stock is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market sometime Friday morning under the ticker symbol "FB." That's when so-called retail investors can try to buy the stock.

Facebook's offering is the culmination of a year's worth of Internet IPOs that began last May with LinkedIn Corp. Since then, a steady stream of startups focused on the social side of the Web has gone public, with varying degrees of success. It all led up to Facebook, the company that's come to define social networking by getting 900 million people around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.

It has done so while managing to become one of the few profitable Internet companies to go public recently. It had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In all of 2011, it earned $1 billion, up from $606 million a year earlier. That's a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and revenue of $153 million.

"They could have gone public in 2009 at a much lower price," said Nick Einhorn, research analyst at IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital. "They waited as long as they could to go public, so it makes sense that it's a very large offering."

Facebook Inc. is the third-highest valued company to go public, according to data from Dealogic, a financial data provider. Only two Chinese banks, Agricultural Bank of China in 2010 and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in 2006, have been worth more. At $16 billion, the size of the IPO is the third-largest for a U.S. company. The largest U.S. IPO was Visa, which raised $17.9 billion in 2008. No. 2 was Enel, a power company and No. 4 was General Motors, according to Renaissance Capital.

For the company that was born in a Harvard dormitory and went on to reimagine online communication, the stock sale means more money to build on the features and services it offers users. It means an infusion of funds to hire the best engineers to work at its sprawling Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, or in New York City, where it opened an engineering office last year.

And it means early investors, who took a chance seeding the young social network with start-up funds six, seven and eight years ago, can reap big rewards. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist who sits on Facebook's board of directors, invested $500,000 in the company back in 2004. He's selling nearly 17 million of his shares in the IPO, which means he'll get some $640 million.

The offering values Facebook, whose 2011 revenue was $3.7 billion, at as much as $104 billion. The sky-high valuation has its skeptics, who worry about signs of a slowdown and Facebook's ability to grow in the mobile space when it was created with desktop computers in mind. Rival Google Inc., whose revenue stood at $38 billion last year, has a market capitalization of $207 billion.

"There seems to be somewhat of a hype around the stock offering," says Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

That, of course, is an understatement.

Facebook's IPO dominated media coverage in the weeks and days leading up to the event. Zuckerberg's hoodie made headlines as did General Motors' decision to stop advertising on the site ?and rival Ford's affirmation that its Facebook ads have been effective.

There are a few reasons for the exuberance. First, there's Facebook's sheer size and high profile. The company grew from a college-only social network to an Internet phenomenon embraced by legions of people, from teenagers to grandmothers to pro-democracy activists in the Middle East.

Secondly, it's personal.

"It's probably one of the first times there has been an IPO where everyone sort of has a stake in the outcome," Blau says. While most Facebook users won't see a penny from the offering, they are all intimately familiar with the company, so it resonates as something they understand.

And then there's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who turned 28 on Monday. He has emerged as the latest in a lineage of Silicon Valley prodigies who are alternately hailed for pushing the world in new directions and reviled for overstepping their bounds. He counted the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs among his mentors and he became one of the world's youngest billionaires ? at least on paper ? well before Facebook went public. A dramatized version of Facebook's founding was the subject of a Hollywood movie that won three Academy Awards last year, propelling Zuckerberg even further into the public spotlight.

Though Zuckerberg is selling about 30 million shares, he will remain Facebook's largest shareholder. Even after the IPO, he will own 503.6 million shares, or 32 percent of Facebook's total shares. At the $38 share price, his stake in the company is worth $19.1 billion. Zuckerberg will control the company with 56 percent of its voting stock as a result of agreements he has with other shareholders who promise to vote his way.

The set-up helps to ensure that he and other executives keep control as the sometimes conflicting demands of Wall Street exert new pressures on the company.

True to form, Zuckerberg and Facebook's engineers are ringing in the IPO on their own terms. The company is holding an overnight "hackathon" Thursday, where engineers stay up writing programming code to come up with new features for the site. On Friday morning, Zuckerberg will ring the Nasdaq opening bell from Facebook's headquarters.

The $38 share price is the price at which the investment banks arranging the offering will sell the stock to their clients. If extra shares reserved to cover additional demand are sold as part of the transaction, Facebook Inc. and its early investors stand to reap as much as $18.4 billion from the offering.

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Follow Barbara Ortutay on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BarbaraOrtutay

Associated Press

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AJEnglish: Op-ed: An ugly demographic battle is the foundation of the "#Jewish and democratic" state of #Israel, says @benabyad http://t.co/jedJgCBM

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Op-ed: An ugly demographic battle is the foundation of the "#Jewish and democratic" state of #Israel, says @benabyad aje.me/L81J1x AJEnglish

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Manhunt for groom charged in Ill. bride's slaying

CHICAGO (AP) ? Police and FBI officials were poring over more than 100 tips as they hunted for a man accused of stabbing his new wife to death and leaving her body in her bathtub, still clad in the silver sequined cocktail dress she wore to celebrate their wedding.

More than 30 law enforcement agencies had joined federal agents in the manhunt for Arnoldo Jimenez, who secretly married Estrella Carrera on Friday night at Chicago City Hall and allegedly killed her just hours later. Police would not say in which states they were looking for him, but that it was "all over the country."

"We are following every lead no matter where it takes us," said Capt. Joseph Ford of the Burbank Police Department, outside Chicago. "We will not stop looking, and this will not go away."

Authorities began looking for Jimenez soon after Carrera's family reported that she failed to pick up her two children Saturday as she had arranged. The family had been unable to reach Carrera or Jimenez, so they asked police to check on her well-being at her apartment in the suburb of Burbank.

That's when Carrera's body was found in the bathtub, still clothed in the dress she also may have worn at her wedding ceremony.

Hours later, Carrera's family received a haunting phone call from a relative of her new husband, who had been her on-and-off boyfriend.

Jimenez' sister told them he had called her and tearfully said he had left his bride bleeding after a "bad fight," Carrera's sister told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Jimenez was charged with first-degree murder, leaving the bride's family searching for answers to what befell the 26-year-old mother of two in the hours after she secretly got married.

Most of Carrera's family disapproved of her relationship with Jimenez, even though he was the father of her 2-year-old son.

Jimenez had hit and bruised Carrera in the past, an older sister, Jazmin Carrera, told the AP. Police also said family members reported incidents of violence while the couple was dating.

Jazmin Carrera described 6-foot, 220-pound Jimenez as "very possessive" and jealous. She said she doesn't understand why her sister married the 30-year-old Jimenez in what seemed like a rushed ceremony ? or why she married him at all.

"That's the question everyone's asking themselves," Jazmin Carrera said.

She got a text message from her sister Friday, inviting her to join them and their friends at a Mexican restaurant and a nightclub to celebrate the nuptials. She didn't join the festivities.

"It was just all of a sudden," Jazmin Carrera said. "She didn't give us enough notice."

On Sunday, relatives heard from a sister of Jimenez that he had called that day, Jazmin Carrera told the AP.

"She said that he was crying and he was really nervous," she said. "He said they had a really bad fight and he had left her bleeding."

Jimenez hung up on his sister and wouldn't pick up when she called him back, Carrera said.

The phone call is the first detail to shed light on what evidence investigators may have given a judge to obtain the warrant. Police in Burbank said they are aware of the account and were looking into it.

Police are pleading with Jimenez to turn himself in "for the sake of his family and especially his children," Ford said. "I am sure they are very concerned for his well-being."

Ford said Jimenez was previously arrested for domestic violence in another city in a case that did not involve Carrera. Police don't know what Jimenez does for a living, although he was last known to be driving a black 2006 Maserati, an expensive car.

"We do not believe Jimenez is a danger to others, but we certainly do not know his mind frame at the present time," Ford told the AP.

Since the killing likely took place mere hours after the couple went to Carrera's apartment, the suspect had a day to flee the metropolitan area or even the state, Ford said.

The victim's sister said she is taking things "a day at a time."

"The emotions are just on and off," Jazmin Carrera said. "It's unbelievable one minute, and then it hits you and becomes real."

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Preventing Childhood Obesity - What Parents Can Do | Health

Prevent Childhood ObesityThe number of overweight and obese children in the US is alarmingly high, but parents can do a lot to treat ? and prevent ? childhood obesity. Obesity is caused by consuming too many calories and not exercising enough. Preventing childhood obesity begins at home, by adopting a healthier lifestyle for the entire family.

Helping Your Overweight Child

As a rule, young children should not be made to lose weight, since they are still growing and developing. The focus, then, should be to maintain the child?s current weight while he or she grow normally in height. If an obese or overweight child must be put on a diet, it should be under the supervision of a physician and only for medical reasons. Children need an adequate supply of calories and nutrients in order to grow and develop normally.

The most effective strategies for preventing childhood obesity are healthy eating habits, regular exercise, and reduced sedentary activities. Instead of watching television or playing computer games, children should be encouraged to dance, jump rope, or engage in other physical activities that they enjoy. A healthy lifestyle should be developed during early childhood and practiced by all members of the family.

Get Your Family Started on a Healthy Lifestyle

If your child is becoming overweight or obese, the whole family can benefit by making healthy lifestyle changes. Singling out your obese child will only make him or her anxious, thus making it more difficult for the child to attain a healthy weight. By involving the entire family, you?ll make it easier for the obese child to adjust. As a bonus, your family will be healthier too.

Start small and make gradual changes that are easy to incorporate into your daily routine and to maintain in the long term. You can start by turning off the TV while eating your meals, and switching from soda to water. Take the family for a walk after dinner once a week.

Create the Right Environment for Healthy Weight

In order to make it easier to develop healthy habits, create an environment that promotes a healthy lifestyle. For example, you can stock your kitchen with fresh fruits and vegetables. Make sure you always have healthy foods on hand, not junk food.

Eat out less often, and find time to prepare nutritious meals for your family. Control portion sizes in order to prevent overeating, but encourage your family to fill up on fruits, vegetables and salads. You can also encourage your kids to get involved in menu planning, shopping, and meal preparation.

Physical activity is very important in preventing childhood obesity. Incorporate physical activity into your daily routine. Dance, jump rope, go for a walk or take a bike ride with your family. Ask your children to help with chores such as walking the dog or washing the car. Limit TV and computer time, and don?t allow eating while watching TV.

Set a Good Example

The best way to teach your child to live a healthy lifestyle and prevent childhood obesity is to commit to it yourself. Be a positive role model by eating nutritious foods and avoiding junk food. Save treats for special occasions. Exercise regularly and keep physically active. Help your child understand the importance of making healthy lifestyle choices.

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Ratko Mladic, Former Serb Military Commander, Stands Trial In The Hague Accused Of War Crimes In Bosnia

Ratko Mladic has gone on trial in The Hague accused of carrying out atrocities in Bosnia, twenty years after the 1992-95 war in which more than 100,000 people died.

The 70-year-old former Serb military commander appeared before the United Nations' Yugoslav war crimes tribunal on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide.

Speaking before the trial, the court?s chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz said: "I don't have to tell you how important it is that finally this trial can start 17 years after the first indictment was issued."

After the end of the war, Mladic went into hiding becoming one of the world?s most famous fugitives. He was finally arrested by Serb forces in Belgrade last May after the election of Boris Tadic, who purged the nation's security forces of nationalists.

Similar to Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is currently half way through his own war crimes trial, Mladic is accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing, and overseeing Europe?s worst massacre since the end for the Second World War, including the killing more than 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995.

Mladic, who has called the charges ?monstrous?, is also accused of a 44-month siege of Sarajevo in which thousands died due to shelling and sniper fire. The General has refused to enter a plea on the charges, so the court has entered a plea of ?not guilty? on his behalf.

The former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, a key player in the Balkan Wars, died in prison in 2006 before a verdict was reached on his own culpability for the genocide. Survivors of the war are concerned a similar fate may befall Mladic, who is in ill health and reportedly suffered a recent stroke.

Mladic remains unrepentant, and entered the courtroom on Wednesday in a grey suit, clapping his hands and waving to the public gallery. If found guilty, he faces life imprisonment.

The trial is expected to last more than 200 hours and will hear from around 400 witnesses, many through written testimony.

OPINION: Scroll down to leave your comments

At a pre-trial hearing last year, Mladic said: "The whole world knows who I am... I am General Ratko Mladic. I defended my people, my country... now I am defending myself."

Mladic still enjoys support in Serbia, with many seeing him as a hero of Serb nationalism.

Mile Mladic, the uncle of the accused, recently said: "A big fuss is created that he is a war criminal; that he is on trial. He has never been, he will never be a war criminal... I don't allow anyone to say that he is a war criminal. He was a military leader, he led his troops, he was a commander; that suited him, and he was only defending his people."

Ahead of the trial, Bruno Lukic, Mladic's defence lawyer said his client was "feeling better". He added: "For a man in the state he is ? he's a man in generally bad shape ? he's feeling pretty good."

ratko mladic
Relatives of the Bosnian war dead took place outside the tribunal

The prosecution is expected to build a case around Mladic?s personal responsibility for Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo. Included in the evidence will be video archives showing the military commander organising troops near to the sites of the massacres, including footage of Mladic telling Muslim young men: "Surrender your weapons and I will guarantee you life. You can survive or you can disappear."

The commander's own war-time diaries are expected to be submitted as evidence.

After the end of the war, a mass grave of 7,000 bodies was found outside Srebrenica.

Opening the proceedings, Dermot Groome, the prosecuting counsel, spoke of a 14-year-old boy who's family members were murdered in 1992. Similar killings were carried out throughout the conflict, said Groome, adding: "By the time Mladic and his troops murdered thousands in Srebrenica... they were well-rehearsed in the craft of murder."

Outside the court, the members of the Mothers of Srebrenica group held a vigil.

PROFILE: Ratko Mladic - From 'Butcher of Bosnia" to withered man.

  • Former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mla

    Former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic (R) arrives on May 16, 2012 at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague before the opening of his war crimes trial. Mladic faces 11 counts including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for his role in the Bosnian war, in particular the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. AFP PHOTO / POOL / TOUSSAINT KLUITERS - netherlands out - (Photo credit should read TOUSSAINT KLUITERS/AFP/GettyImages)

  • Former Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, center, a UN security guard, right, and member of his defense, left, are seen at the start of his trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday May 16, 2012. Twenty years after the opening shots of the Bosnian War, Mladic has gone on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, his appearance at the UN tribunal marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. (AP Photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Pool)

  • Former Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, center rear, a UN security guard, rear right, and member of his defense, front, are seen at the start of his trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday May 16, 2012. Twenty years after the opening shots of the Bosnian War, Mladic has gone on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, his appearance at the UN tribunal marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. (AP Photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Pool)

  • Former Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic is seen at the start of his trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday May 16, 2012. Twenty years after the opening shots of the Bosnian War, Mladic has gone on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, his appearance at the UN tribunal marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. (AP Photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Pool)

  • Former Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, right, and a UN security guard, left, are seen at the start of his trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday May 16, 2012. Twenty years after the opening shots of the Bosnian War, Mladic has gone on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, his appearance at the UN tribunal marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. (AP Photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Pool)

  • Former Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic is seen at the start of his trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday May 16, 2012. Twenty years after the opening shots of the Bosnian War, Mladic has gone on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, his appearance at the UN tribunal marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. (AP Photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Pool)

  • Former Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic is seen at the start of his trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday May 16, 2012. Twenty years after the opening shots of the Bosnian War, Mladic has gone on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, his appearance at the UN tribunal marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. (AP Photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Pool)

  • Former Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic is seen at the start of his trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday May 16, 2012. Twenty years after the opening shots of the Bosnian War, Mladic has gone on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, his appearance at the UN tribunal marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. (AP Photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Pool)

  • Former Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic is seen at the start of his trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday May 16, 2012. Twenty years after the opening shots of the Bosnian War, Mladic has gone on trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, his appearance at the UN tribunal marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. (AP Photo/Toussaint Kluiters, Pool)

  • FILE- In this Dec. 2, 1995, file photo Bosnian-Serb General Ratko Mladic is seen during a visit of troops in the east Bosnian town of Vlasenica. Twenty years after Serb forces unleashed a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, their military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic is finally going on trial Wednesday may 16, 2012, on charges of masterminding atrocities throughout the country's devastating 1992-95 war. (AP Photo/Oleg Stjepanovic, File)

  • A graffiti of war crimes suspect Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic reads 'Hero' in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, March 12, 2012. A Serb far-right group has burned a provincial flag and posted portraits of Mladic to celebrate the 69th birthday of the jailed war crimes suspect. The wartime Bosnian Serb army commander was arrested in May and sent to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

  • A woman walks pass a graffiti that reads 'Mladic Hero' in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, March 12, 2012. A Serb far-right group has burned a provincial flag and posted portraits of Mladic to celebrate the 69th birthday of the jailed war crimes suspect. The wartime Bosnian Serb army commander was arrested in May and sent to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

  • In this photo taken on Monday, Oct. 10, 2011, people pass by a defaced mural depicting former war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic in Belgrade, Serbia. When Serbia arrested Mladic earlier this year, its rocky road leading to European Union membership appeared finally clear of the key obstacle. But then came riots by Serbs in Kosovo, including clashes with NATO-led peacekeepers, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel's demand that Serbia must abandon its claim over the former province before finally becoming a EU candidate. The letters on the mural read "Death" in Serbian. (AP Photo/ Marko Drobnjakovic)

  • Bosnians demonstrate on 16 May, 2012 out

    Bosnians demonstrate on 16 May, 2012 outside the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the Netherlands, where the trial of former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic opened. Mladic faces 11 counts including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for his role in the Bosnian war, in particular the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. AFP PHOTO / ANP / TOUSSAINT KLUITERS - netherlands out - (Photo credit should read TOUSSAINT KLUITERS/AFP/GettyImages)

  • Serbs Mourn Bosnia War Dead

    BRATUNAC, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA - JULY 12: Supporters of the Serbian Radical Party (Srpska Radikalna Stranka) stand by a flag that depicts Ratko Mladic, former Chief of Staff of the Bosnian Serb army and currently on trial in The Hague on charges of war crimes, on the edge of a commemoration ceremony for Bosnian Serb soldiers and civilians killed in the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 at the Serbian cemetery on July 12, 2011 in Bratunac, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many Serbs in the region around Bratunac joined the Bosnian Serb army, which was responsible for the ethnic cleansing, murder and mass rape of local Bosnian Muslim civilians, including the notorious Srebrenica massacre. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

  • Serbs Mourn Bosnia War Dead

    BRATUNAC, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA - JULY 12: A supporter of the Serbian Radical Party (Srpska Radikalna Stranka) waves a flag that depicts Ratko Mladic, former Chief of Staff of the Bosnian Serb army and currently on trial in The Hague on charges of war crimes, on the edge of a commemoration ceremony for Bosnian Serb soldiers and civilians killed in the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 at the Serbian cemetery on July 12, 2011 in Bratunac, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many Serbs in the region around Bratunac joined the Bosnian Serb army, which was responsible for the ethnic cleansing, murder and mass rape of local Bosnian Muslim civilians, including the notorious Srebrenica massacre. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

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Matthew Lynn's London Eye: Germany will blink, and won?t let Greece exit euro

By Matthew Lynn

LONDON (MarketWatch) ? It doesn?t take long for an idea to become an accepted fact in the markets.

Six months ago, talk of Greece leaving the euro was seen as so unlikely nobody had to think seriously about. Now the ?Grexit? ? as a Greek exit from the euro has been dubbed ? is increasingly seen as a done deal.

Citibank rates the chances as high as 75% that Greece will leave the single currency in the next 18 months. The British bookmaker William Hill regards it as such as done deal it is no longer taking bets.

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Far Left Coalition in Greece.

It?s not hard to understand why. The Greeks won?t accept austerity anymore. The Germans won?t give them any more money if they don?t take the harsh medicine that is being prescribed. Game over. The exit signs are flashing red.

There?s just one snag with that analysis. It isn?t going to happen. Germany will realize the risks involved, eat its words and come up with a mega bailout. Instead of a ?Grexit? we?ll see a ?Grashall Plan? ? as a Marshall Plan for Greece will quickly be dubbed ? to reflate its economy and keep the euro staggering on for a couple more years, at least.

There?s no mystery about why the markets have suddenly woken up to the possibility that Greece quitting the single currency is suddenly a very real possibility. The Greek election decisively rejected the austerity plan imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Unless it sticks to the plan, no more bailout money is forthcoming.

And the country is broke. Its budget deficit is still vast, and it has no way of raising money on the capital markets by itself. The cash to pay its bondholders isn?t going to be there. The police and soldiers and public servants are not going to get their wages. Without the next slug of bailout money, Greece is going to quite literally shut down.

With little sign of a new government being formed, there is now the prospect of another election next month. But there is very little evidence it will produce a different result. The Greeks voted against austerity in May, and will probably do so again in June. Nothing much has happened to change their minds. A fresh election might well result in an even more decisive anti-austerity majority.

How could Greece exit the euro?

There's no legal provision in EU treaties for a country to exit the euro. Despite that, a Greek exit from the single currency is being openly discussed. Dow Jones's Jenny Paris and Terence Roth pick through the implications. Photo: Getty Images

Meanwhile, German officials have started briefing that the groundwork has been done, and that a ?Grexit? is now a manageable event. The German newspapers are suddenly full of briefings from senior government officials that everything is under control. Sure, they don?t want the Greeks to leave the euro, and no one is forcing them out. But if it happens, it happens. Maybe there will be some chaos in the markets. But there is a plan in place to make sure the country is ushered out smoothly ? and the euro emerges otherwise intact.

It all adds up to making the ?Grexit? look like a done deal.

But it isn?t. The Germans are talking tough. When it comes to the crunch, however, they will blink, and deliver a Marshall Plan?style package to keep Greece in the euro.

Here?s why.

A ?Grexit? is a very high-risk strategy.

There is absolutely no way of knowing whether contagion to other countries can be contained. True, you can build firewalls around the banks, and try to make sure that any losses on the bonds are not catastrophic for the financial system. You can boost the Stability Facility, and make sure that the IMF is on standby to hose down any fires that start to break out. You can line up a few emergency summits to solemnly declare that even though the Greeks might be out, there is no way the Portuguese or the Irish are going to follow them, and certainly not the Italians or the Spanish.

The trouble is, you can?t really know how it will play out. No one has tried breaking up a single currency before. Money may start to flee out of every country at risk of coming out of the euro. Fiats may start loading up with bank notes and driving across the border to deposit Italian euros in German banks, and Seat?s with Spanish euros to go into French banks. It won?t make much sense to keep any cash in a country at risk. A full-scale bank run could easily get out of control, and blow up the best-laid plans in hours.

Next, the Greek economy may collapse completely, and society with it. A hastily re-introduced drachma will be worth nothing. Greece may not be able to pay for petrol for police cars or medicines for the hospitals. Law and order could break down. Floods of refugees may start to stream across the borders. No one has any real idea what will happen, but it could be very bad. And worst of all, the EU and Germany in particular, will get the blame for it.

There is, of course, an alternative. The Greeks can?t carry on with the austerity being imposed on them. No country can be expected to endure annualized falls in GDP of 7% or more and 50% youth unemployment for years on end. It simply isn?t acceptable.

But Germany and the rest of the EU could come up with a Marshall Plan-style package for Greece. Very little of the bailout money so far has gone to the Greeks. It has all gone to the bankers. A 230 billion euro package (the equivalent of 10% of Greece?s shrunken GDP) to reflate the economy would buy Greece some time.

It might not work in the medium-term; in fact, it will make things worse. But in a crisis, politicians work on very short time scales. What?s better? The risk of a full-scale catastrophe? Or a 230 billion euro bailout package that buys you breathing space?

Forget talk of a ?Grexit?. There will be a mega-bailout ? a ?Grashall Plan? ? instead. And when it happens, the markets will rally on the news.

Matthew Lynn is chief executive of Strategy Economics, a London-based consultancy. His latest book, ?The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031,? is published by Endeavour Press.

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This Is Your Brain on Drugs

Image: Paul Sale Vern Hoffman/Aurora Photos (background); iStockphoto (head)

In the 1954 foundational text of the Age of Aquarius, The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley describes his encounters with mescaline, a psychoactive substance derived from the peyote cactus and traditionally used by Native Americans for religious purposes. Huxley?s experiences include profound changes in the visual world, colors that induce sound, the telescoping of time and space, the loss of the notion of self, and feelings of oneness, peacefulness and bliss more commonly associated with religious visions or an exultant state: ?A moment later a clump of Red Hot Pokers, in full bloom, had exploded into my field of vision. So passionately alive that they seemed to be standing on the very brink of utterance, the flowers strained upwards into the blue.... I looked down at the leaves and discovered a cavernous intricacy of the most delicate green lights and shadows, pulsing with undecipherable mystery.? Yet remarkably these enhanced percepts are not grounded in larger but in reduced brain activity, as a recent experiment reports. More on that in a moment.

Mescaline, together with psilocybin, another natural psychoactive compound produced by ?magic? mushrooms, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD or, simply, acid), a potent synthetic psychedelic drug, became widely popular in the 1960s counterculture. The striking similarities between the reports of LSD users and symptoms of acute psychosis led researchers to postulate that serotonin, a chemical-signaling compound or neurotransmitter released by certain groups of neurons in the brain stem, helped to mediate both types of experiences. Indeed, it is now quite certain that the characteristic subjective and behavioral effects of psychedelics are initiated via stimulation of serotonin 2A receptors (known as 5-HT2A) on cortical neurons.

All these hallucinogens were declared controlled drugs in the late 1960s and early 1970s for a variety of medical, political and cultural reasons. Their use moved underground, and research on their psychological, physiological and neuronal effects all but ceased. With the realization of possible therapeutic benefits of psychedelics to reduce anxiety and chronic pain, however, the societal taboos against scientific research on their neurobiology have somewhat relaxed. A number of well-controlled European studies have carefully explored the action of hallucinogens on the brains of normal volunteers [see ?Psychedelic Healing?? by David Jay Brown; Scientific American Mind, December 2007/January 2008].

Functional brain-imaging experiments done at the end of the past century using positron-emission tomography (PET) found marked activation in the frontal lobe of volunteers who had taken hallucinogens, in particular in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the insula cortex. This was in line with the expectation that the intensification of ordinary experiences and the consciousness-expanding aspects that are so widely associated with psychedelics would be reflected in higher than usual brain activity. Now comes a study from David Nutt, a psychopharmacologist at Imperial College London, and his colleagues that completely upends this view.

Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out
The British scientists injected either a harmless saltwater concoction (a placebo) or two milligrams of psilocybin directly into the veins of 30 volunteers while they were lying inside a magnetic scanner. As expected, the subjects experienced within a minute or two the effects of the drug. During their short ?trip,? their brains were scanned with one of two different functional MRI techniques. Both gave consistent but very surprising results.

Brain activity was widely reduced! That is, these mind-altering drugs decreased hemodynamic activity, including blood flow, in selected regions, such as the thalamus, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the ACC and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Activity in these regions dropped by up to 20 percent, relative to before the injection. Even more striking, the deeper the reduction in activity in the ACC and mPFC, the stronger the subject felt the effects of the hallucinogen. Nowhere did activity show an increase. Furthermore, the communication between the PFC and cortical regions in the back of the brain was also disrupted. The surprise is not that reduction of hemodynamic activity in specific sectors of the brain is unheard of. Nor was the activity completely turned off?that would lead within minutes to permanent damage and brain death.


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The Real Estate Informer ? Evaluating The Impact of Short Sales ...

REO / Short Sales Analysis ChartFor the past few years our local real estate market has been dominated by the financial crisis that caused a melt-down in real estate values across the country. Like everywhere else, the result was a seemingly never-ending string of short sales and bank owned homes for sale (REOs) that had been foreclosed. Historically this has tended to hold prices down so the big question on everybody?s lips was ?When will it all end??

The latest indication based on the chart shown here is that the end is in sight.? Inventory is at record lows (less than a 2 month supply in most areas). It is significant that Short Sales and REOs are also way down (as a percentage of the active listings). In fact, with the exception of Walnut Creek and perhaps surprisingly, Alamo and Danville, all of our cities are down to single digit numbers of distressed properties.

And look at the number of Sales Agreed compared to the number of homes available. This gives us the number of months inventory available and it is certainly not a lot. Homes really are selling fast in the San Ramon Valley and Lamorinda.

If you still have doubts as to where the market stands now, ask any real estate agent. They all say that everything is selling like crazy, there is no inventory and multiple offers are becoming the norm. Many have a familiar lament (one that was common back in 2006) ? ?I?ve written 10 offers for this buyer and we keep getting beat out by offers well over list price?.

So how does this affect you as a potential buyer or a seller? If you are a seller you must realize that now is an opportune time to list your home for sale and realize a price higher than in years. It still needs to be prepared for sale and professionally marketed for sale but the return should be worth the effort.

As a buyer, you should see that we probably have ?hit bottom? (in fact we may well be viewing the bottom from the other side on the way back up now). And as has always been the case, you need to be lender approved before you write any offers. One point you really have to bear in mind is that the List Price will probably only be a ?starting place? in many cases. Most desirable homes that are being listed for sale now are getting multiple offers within days and sale prices are getting agreed above list price.

I recently listed a pleasant, but unexceptional home for sale in San Ramon. The kitchen was updated and it was well-maintained and I listed it at the price I thought it was worth as was supported by comparable recent sales. We held an Open House the first weekend after listing and had around 50 groups through ? more than any Open House I have held in the last 10 years! 3 offers were received virtually immediately and we agreed a sale a little over list price on exactly the terms my sellers wanted. This is not an unusual situation now and it shows exactly where the market is.

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Online Video Content Pioneer Revision3 In Acquisition Talks With The Discovery Channel

Screen Shot 2012-04-30 at 10.10.25 PMSeven years in, Revision3?and its stable of web stars have more than survived the tough early days of building a video content business on the web. The San Francisco company is now bringing in a respectable?100 million video views?per month, following a big 2011 -- and it may be about to cash in.

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Donald Trump FINALLY Fires Dayana Mendoza

Dayana Mendoza may have been a Miss Universe, but Donald Trump finally fired her from Celebrity Apprentice last night. After another grueling Board Room show down between Dayana and Lisa Lampanelli, The Donald had had enough. This, despite the fact that bot Lisa and Clay Aikens argued that Dayana did very little in this week?s task of writing a jingle for the Good Sam organization. Once again, the so-called ?creative? talents of Lisa and Clay fell short, but they live to fight another day. Meanwhile, Aubrey O?Day managed to help Arsenio Hall win the task, despite his initial rejection of her game-winning suggestions. Donald Trump may think the world of former Miss Universe Dayana Mendoza, but he still was forced to fire her from Celebrity Apprentice. Image Credit: Ivan Nikolov / Wenn.com. The fun begins with Trump telling both teams about this week?s task of creating a 90-second long jingle to promote the Good Sam cell phone app. Arsenio and Dayana are the Project Managers while Ivanka and Don Jr. are daddy?s viceroys. Right away things get dicey for Team Forte when Dayana asks Clay and Lisa if the jingle must be like a Christmas song? Jingle Bells, Dayana smells, [...]

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