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Saturday, October 19, 2013

Wall St. pushes past record, Google's stock tops $1,000

By Julia Edwards

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Friday, with the S&P 500 index heading for its best week in more than three months and earnings from Google, Morgan Stanley and others lifting sentiment.

The S&P 500, which rose above Thursday's intraday record of 1732.92 and all-time closing high of 1732.90, was on pace for its third straight day of gains.

In addition to earnings, the market's rise was based on expectations that the Federal Reserve will delay trimming its stimulus measures due to the damage inflicted on the economy by the partial U.S. government shutdown that ended on Thursday.

The market was also relieved that Washington had reached a deal to end the fiscal stalemate.

"Truthfully most of this is the market pricing in the high likelihood that there will be a continuation of monetary policy through the spring," said Jeff Buetow, chief investment officer at Innealta Capital in Austin, Texas, which manages $3 billion in assets.

"With the insanity that took place over the past few weeks, I think the Fed is probably going to put some of the long-term decisions on hold," Buetow said.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 26.01 points, or 0.17 percent, at 15,397.66. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 11.26 points, or 0.65 percent, at 1,744.41. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 47.49 points, or 1.23 percent, at 3,910.64.

Google Inc shares were up 13 percent to $1,007.51 a day after the search engine company posted results that beat forecasts. Google, whose stock hit $1,000 for the first time, led the S&P technology sector, up 1.6 percent, to outperform all other sectors.

Health was the only declining sector, down 0.6 percent on predictions from UnitedHealth that the new healthcare law's provision to decrease private Medicare payments could hurt earnings. [ID:nL1N0I70E9] UnitedHealth shares fell 3.2 percent to $69.08.

Morgan Stanley shares rose 2.5 percent to $29.64 after the company reported a 50 percent rise in quarterly revenue as higher income from equities sales and trading offset a drop in its fixed-income business.

General Electric said its third-quarter profit and revenue fell as its finance business shrunk, but Wall Street looked beyond those numbers to GE's improving profit margins and growing order demand. GE shares rose 4.2 percent to $25.71.

Of the 98 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported so far, 62.2 percent have topped Wall Street expectations, just shy of the 63 percent average since 1994 but below the 66 percent beat rate over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data through Friday.

On revenue, 53.1 percent of the S&P 500 components have beaten expectations, short of the 61 percent rate since 2002 but above the 49 percent beat rate over the past four quarters.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards; Editing by Leslie Adler and Kenneth Barry)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-futures-climb-rosy-corporate-results-120237914--sector.html
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'The Book of Jezebel': An Honest Look At 'Lady Things'

The website Jezebel takes a unique approach to women's media — focusing on politics, entertainment and advocacy issues typically absent from so-called beauty magazines.

Now the site is making its first foray onto the bookshelves with The Book of Jezebel: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Lady Things.

"I've been calling it an illustrated encyclopedia of the world," Jezebel founder Anna Holmes says. Holmes edited the new book, and warns NPR's Arun Rath that the volume isn't intended to be comprehensive.

"There is plenty of stuff that I forgot to put in there," she says. "So when I say 'encyclopedia of the world,' — it's an abridged encyclopedia."

She discusses her brainchild and some of the site's best projects to date — including a collection of unretouched photographs from popular beauty magazines.

Interview Highlights

On what Jezebel, the website, tries to reflect

"With the website, what we were trying to do, and I think we did, was to provide an alternative to traditional women's media — and by that I mean mostly women's magazines, but also some websites that existed — that I felt and the staffers felt were patronizing to young American women in that they tended to promote an obsession with romance or the acquiring of a man and the keeping of a man and the pleasing of a man, in addition to things like consumerism, buying clothes, makeup, etc.

"And it's not that we have a problem with clothes or makeup — or men — but women are much more diverse in their interests (and multifaceted) than a lot of women's media was giving them credit for."

On Jezebel's unretouched photo series

"That was, I believe, about a month and a half after we launched. We launched in May 2007 and one of the first posts that went up was a call for an unretouched cover photograph of a women's magazine. Now, these are not easy things to just get. I mean, they're kept under lock and key for a reason. I would assume that maybe five people ever see an unretouched cover photograph of, let's say, Cosmo or Glamour.

Anna Holmes founded Jezebel, a blog that offers a feminist take on traditional women's magazine content, in 2007. She resigned as editor in 2010 and is now a columnist for The New York Times Book Review.

Anna Wolf/Courtesy of Grand Central Publishing

"I got a couple of submissions over the following weeks and the best one, meaning the worst one, was a cover of Redbook magazine. It was an image of Faith Hill and comparing it to the cover that was on the news stand, which was out right about that time, it was apparent that they had slimmed her down considerably. They had just done things to her limbs, her skin, her face, her body, her hair that when you compared these two photos side by side it was really quite startling.

"Because in the unretouched photograph, she looked like a regular human being. In the retouched photograph she looked like what we think of human beings who are celebrities look like. Which is to say, somewhat kind of off."

On her favorite entry from the book

"I had wanted to have an entry for the phrase 'crazy cat lady' because I think they get a bum rap. I mean, I'm an animal lover and I have a cat so I wanted someone to do an illustration, a kind of taxonomy of the crazy cat lady that was both honest but loving. So an illustrator named Wendy McNaughton did a full page illustration of the crazy cat lady and within the illustration you see a brunette woman wearing a pink bathrobe. In one of the pockets of the bath robe there is a digital camera for cat pictures.

"There are — one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight — nine other cats in the illustration. One of the cats is dressed up in an outfit. I mean, I don't know anyone who actually dresses their cats up in outfits, but...

"Then at the bottom it says, 'note lack of ring,' meaning lack of wedding ring. Now, that's totally unfair, but it was hyperbole. I don't think anyone really thinks that women who love cats don't get married."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/19/237004361/the-book-of-jezebel-an-honest-look-at-lady-things?ft=1&f=1032
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Sponsors help women reach executive ranks

Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: Tuesday, October 15, 2013, 2:01 AM

Mentors can dispense sage wisdom over endless cups of coffee, but it takes a sponsor's relentless advocacy to propel a woman to a seat on a corporate board and a desk in a corner office.

That's the message that will be presented Tuesday when the Forum of Executive Women releases its annual report on women in business leadership.

"Sponsorship goes beyond mentoring," said Nila G. Betof, president of the businesswomen's association. "Sponsorship is where the sponsor puts his or her capital on the table in advocating for a woman."

"Sponsorship is like mentoring on steroids," said Deanna Byrne, a partner in the Philadelphia office of PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P. She credits one of her sponsors for positioning her to land her current assignment providing accounting services for one of the company's Fortune 500 clients.

The forum has been studying the influence of women on the leadership of the region's publicly traded companies since at least 2005.

In that time, there has been progress, but not enough, leaders say.

For example, women held 12 percent of board seats in 2012 (103 out of 829), a 30 percent increase since 2005. There is also a higher percentage of female executives - 12 percent in 2012, up 33 percent from 2005.

Significantly, women also are commanding more money. In 2012, one in 10 of the top earners (50 of 491) were women, up 67 percent from 2005.

But a third of the region's top 100 publicly traded companies have no women on their boards.

One in five companies have no women board members, no women executives, and no women among the company's top earners.

Only six of the 100 chief executives are women, and only eight companies have three or more women on their boards.

"The progress continues to be very, very slow," said Betof, chief operating officer of the Leader's Edge/Leaders by Design, a Bala Cynwyd company that grooms executives to advance their careers.

The issue of female corporate leadership is attracting more attention. Catapulting the topic onto talk shows and radio programs was Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, a book by Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook.

In September, Mayor Nutter signed a law that will require companies doing business with Philadelphia to disclose the number of women in their executive ranks.

"Female employees who work hard and play by the rules are often overlooked when it comes to the 'big' assignments and large promotions," said P. Edward Lovelidge, managing director of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Philadelphia.

"It is relationships with sponsors that can make the difference," he said.

Titled The Power of Sponsorship: A Call to Action, the forum's report lists companies and their female executives (or lack of them), and tells the stories of sponsors and their protégés.

For example, F. William McNabb 3d is the chief executive officer and chairman of the Vanguard Group of Mutual Funds - the top job in one of the nation's top financial companies. Martha G. King is a managing director at Vanguard and head of U.S. financial intermediaries - one of the company's top positions. She heads Vanguard's second biggest line of business.

McNabb and King are related, but not in the family sense. Shortly after King began at Vanguard as a college hire, McNabb recognized her as a potential leader, and took aggressive and substantial measures to sponsor her rise through the company. Their relationship is now 25 years old.

McNabb sponsored King to head institutional sales for the western region, though she wasn't the obvious choice of the selection committee, the report said. He also transferred her back early to the company's headquarters to lead the institutional investment only business. That was a large, integrated business unit, compared with her earlier more-focused responsibilities.

"Someone did it for me, and I have an absolute obligation to do it for others," McNabb said in the forum report.

Helen F. Giles-Gee president of the University of the Sciences, described how she sponsored Emile "Mel" Netzhammer, now chancellor of Washington State University, Vancouver, when Giles-Gee was president of Keene State College in New Hampshire.

She hired him as provost and then assigned him to chair a finance committee. Netzhammer would have preferred a more academic assignment, but ended up with important skills.

Giles-Gee nominated Netzhammer for his current job.

jvonbergen@phillynews.com

215-854-2769

@JaneVonBergen

www.inquirer.com/jobbing

Source: http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166721&44=227757391&32=3796&7=195342&40=http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20131015_Sponsors_help_women_reach_executive_ranks.html
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ABC and Univision's love child bursts to life

MIAMI (AP) — The long-awaited DNA exchange between ABC and Univision emerges from the test tube this month, aiming to stretch the limits of traditional network programming. The English-language television network, called Fusion, will target millennial Hispanics and their BFFs as it attempts to capitalize on a generation for which cultural fusion is the norm and digital media is king.

The network will provide something of a grab bag: a mix of hard news, commentary, sports and irreverence aimed at 16- to 30-year-olds. Sure, there will be nightly news programs, but also an animated puppet news and entertainment show by David Javerbaum, former head writer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Think Comedy Central, the hipster online magazine Vice.com, ABC and Univision, all in one.

"Not everyone will get it; and that's sort of the point," Univision News President and now Fusion CEO Isaac Lee wrote in a memo to staff earlier this month.

To "get" what Fusion is attempting, it helps to tour its home and meet the players:

THE STARTUP

The green and blue mood-lighting of the warehouse-turned-news hub known as Newsport suggests Miami Beach club over newsroom. Like millennials who can't afford to move out on their own, Fusion shares the cavernous space with Spanish-language parent Univision News. Senior staff members gather for brainstorming sessions in brightly painted and glass-walled rooms overlooking the newsroom.

On a recent afternoon, Lee strode across the floor like the head of a Silicon Valley startup, sketching flow charts of Fusion's evolution. As he talked, one millennial staffer wrestled a ping pong ball from the mouth of Chocolate, Lee's brown Labrador. Others chimed in on the essence of the network that goes live Oct. 28.

As befits a project geared to a generation used to downloading the latest mobile update, Fusion has been beta testing in plain view. In 2011, Lee brought together a group of recent journalism school graduates to work on an English-language Tumblr for Univision. The young journalists created original news, curated stories and produced short documentaries.

Lee learned what worked (humor) and what didn't (direct Univision translations). The approach bought him time to win over holdouts at Univision, a company that built its brand on Spanish-language affinity.

THE PROS

"I hate ties. They are really useless. Why do I have to have a piece of cloth hanging from my neck every day?" fumed Jorge Ramos, the silver-haired veteran Univision anchor with piercing blue eyes, one of a handful of senior journalists to join Fusion.

As Ramos jogged up the stairs, he yanked the offending garment out of his bag and held it up to his neck. "This is my Univision uniform," he said, then dropped his arm and grinned, "and this is Fusion."

Ramos, who co-hosts Univision's popular nightly newscast with Maria Elena Salinas, will pull double duty. He frankly acknowledges his own millennial kids don't watch his Univision newscast, or any other. He is also blunt about the limits of his native language.

"It is very frustrating many times to have a great interview on the Sunday news story, and no one (in Washington) is paying attention simply because it's in Spanish," he said.

Ramos doesn't plan to dumb things down. He does plan to mention Mexico — the country sharing 2,000 miles of the United States' southern border — almost as much as he mentions Syria. One of his first interviews is with Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who earned attention and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation for his aggressive attempts to crack down on illegal immigration.

THE FEMALE FACTOR

Alicia Menendez describes her new Fusion show as a mix of sex, money and politics.

Isn't everything?

"Yes, but most people won't admit it," Menendez shot back. The 30-year-old gained early exposure to politics as the daughter of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. She's anchored programs for HuffPost Live and Sirius XM but says Fusion is the first network to speak to her generation.

Her first show: millennials' lack of monogamy and how self-inflicted singledom affects home purchasing.

Fusion describes itself as "Championing a smart, diverse and inclusive America." But Menendez's show notwithstanding, when it comes to gender, Fusion resembles Silicon Valley startups more than its tagline: it's stocked with talented women on the news floor but has virtually none on its senior creative and executive team.

THE PARTNERSHIP

ABC News President Ben Sherwood compares Fusion to the web of highways California built back in the 1950s.

"No one could understand why you would build a freeway with six lanes. But the visionaries of California knew that if you built these freeways, people would come," he said.

Like California's freeway system, the plan is to scale up, starting with 20 million homes and expanding to 60 million in the next few years.

It was a logical move for the Disney-owned ABC, which has no cable news counterpart and provides Fusion broad distribution through its cable and satellite contracts. It can also share news content with minimal investment. ABC has sent staff to work with Fusion on content and production, and Fusion's vice-president of news Mark Lima came from ABC's "Nightline."

For Univision, Fusion poses a greater risk, but the company has the financial wherewithal to weather initial bumps. Its prime-time broadcasts ruled July sweeps ahead of the other four major networks among coveted 19-49 viewers. In Fusion, it's looking ahead to the second- and third-generation Latinos who get their news in English. Nearly two-thirds of the 52 million Hispanics living in the U.S. are native born.

Still, the experiment hasn't been without awkward moments. As Fusion prepared to go live, top staffers were quoted sniping about the ages of their older counterparts at Univision.

THE COMPETITION

Fusion has competitors. Participant Media launched Pivot TV this summer, promoting social advocacy among millennials. Sean Combs' new music focused Revolt TV debut's this month.

Still, Morley Winograd, a University of Southern California fellow and author of books on media and millennials, says Fusion has the right ingredients for success and a huge potential market for advertisers.

"The two earliest cable channels specifically targeted at millennials were the ABC Family Channel and the Disney Channel," Winograd said. "It's not surprising then that a 'Fusion' of Univision and ABC decided upon Latino millennials as their market. Each side of the partnership knows a great deal about one half of that audience combination."

Lee insists Fusion will take some time to find its footing. MSNBC took years to settle on its left-of-center brand. Fox News Channel wasn't the nation's most popular cable news network out of the gate.

"Nobody's doing what we are doing," he said, "so there's one way to find out what works and what doesn't."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/abc-univisions-love-child-bursts-life-124727046.html
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Rovio to Release Free Angry Birds App

MOSCOW -- Angry Birds is going downhill.

In a first for the Finnish-designed feathered cartoon characters, makers Rovio are launching a mobile telephone app Angry Birds Go!

The free app, available worldwide from Dec. 11, features a high-octane downhill race that includes all the famous avian characters and their arch-enemies the evil pigs from the video game.

The app includes a bizarre range of racing machines that can be upgraded, characters with special powers and range of 3D worlds.

Rovio, which released a gameplay trailer Tuesday to advertise the game ahead of its release, said: "The game will be built from the ground up as a free-to-play title, with a whole host of modes and features included from the get-go."

The company plans to release a "special countdown app" at the end of this month for the game which will be available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10.

Speaking Tuesday afternoon at Brand Licensing Europe 2013 in London during a presentation entitled "Angry Birds: How Rovio Disrupted the Entertainment Industry," Jami Laes, executive vp gaming and Naz Cuevas, senior vp licensing at Rovio said the company would continue to focus on making Angry Birds a long-lasting brand, they said. "We're building an evergreen," Cuevas told the industry crowd.

The executives then unveiled the Angry Birds Go! game trailer in a world premiere.

Laes said Helsinki, Finland-based Rovio created 51 games before striking gold with Angry Birds, meaning the company wasn't the overnight success it is sometimes believed to be.

Laes also touted the planned July 2016 launch of Angry Birds: The Movie.

Georg Szalai in London contributed to this report.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheHollywoodReporter-Technology/~3/Vqo4339xzE4/story01.htm
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Erykah Badu

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Factions

This is the Faction thread. It is here that the different factions and races of Aeos may be delved into with greater detail. Anyone wishing to go into moe detail about a race or faction should say so in the OOC thread. Please note you do not have to use the outline below.

Suggested Outline For Nations:

Code: Select all: Name of the Nation:Races: Culture: Religion: Economy: Diplomatic Relations: History: Military:

Suggested Outline for Races:

Code: Select all: Name:Life Expectancy: Physical Characteristics/Appearance: Magical Ability: Culture: Religion: History:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/VdknSTQBQnA/viewtopic.php
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