F.T.C. Pushes Antitrust Inquiry Against Google Into January

WASHINGTON — Google was prepared to start the holidays early this week, by settling its antitrust dispute with federal regulators without a harsh punishment.

But in shelving its inquiry until January, the Federal Trade Commission has put stronger penalties back on the bargaining table, people briefed on the investigation who were not authorized to speak publicly about it said Wednesday.

For two years, the F.T.C. has been looking into whether Google abuses its market power by favoring its own services over rivals in search results. Google and the agency had been planning to sign a settlement this week that would have said Google would change some of its behavior but that would not have been subject to court action.

The agency may now demand a consent decree — a formal order detailing anticompetitive behavior and an agreement that if the company does the same thing again, it could be fined and subject to court sanctions. Google has instead offered voluntary concessions.

But the people briefed, and others close to the negotiations, said the agency was unlikely to take a second look at one of the major issues — Google’s dominance in specialized search, like travel and local reviews — because the legal hurdles remain high.

Google has long said that it does not believe it has broken antitrust laws and that the agency’s case against it is weak. Jill Hazelbaker, a Google spokeswoman, said that it continued to cooperate with the F.T.C. but declined to comment further.

Cecelia Prewett, an F.T.C. spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Competitors of Google called for the agency to use the additional time to take harsher legal action against Google. Failing to do so would hurt consumers in many ways, including by allowing Google too much control over private data, said Pamela Jones Harbour, a former F.T.C. commissioner and a lawyer representing Microsoft.

Supporters of Google said its case had already been made.

“If in 19 months they did not offer the kind of evidence and facts to support a case or conclude the behavior was such that it was posing legal difficulties, then frankly another couple weeks isn’t going to make a difference,” said Ed Black, chief executive of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, of which Google is a member.

Regulators’ decision to delay resolution of the case offered a glimpse of the tense negotiations and a series of missteps that have bedeviled the negotiations.

As details of a possible settlement appeared in news reports over the last week, Google’s competitors began arguing that a settlement without court-enforced sanctions was meaningless.

At the F.T.C., people close to the agency said, commissioners grew irked that they were being portrayed as spineless. In a parallel investigation, European regulators were said to be wringing a more stringent agreement from Google.

But it was unclear that Jon D. Leibowitz, the F.T.C. chairman, could get the two votes necessary to approve a tougher case against Google.

The five commissioners had yet to vote on possible sanctions. Julie Brill, a Democrat commissioner, supported strong antitrust action, while Edith Ramirez, the commission’s other Democrat, has resisted the strictest sanctions, said the people who have been briefed on the inquiry.

J. Thomas Rosch, a Republican, questioned whether the agency had the evidence to bring a case on search manipulation, but also expressed skepticism at a settlement that did not involve a consent decree, the people briefed said. Maureen K. Ohlhausen, the other Republican commissioner, opposed the government’s interference in private enterprise, they said.

Each of the commissioners and an F.T.C. spokeswoman declined to respond to queries about their views on the settlement.

Throughout the deliberations, both sides have complained about leaks to the news media of details of private meetings and settlement terms.

Edward Wyatt reported from Washington and Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 20, 2012

An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled the surname of the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission as Liebowitz, rather than Leibowitz.

Read More..

Robert Bork, failed Supreme Court nominee, dies at age 85

Robert H. Bork, whose failed Supreme Court nomination in 1987 infuriated conservatives and politicized the confirmation process for the ensuing decades, died Wednesday at the age of 85. 

The former Yale law professor and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit had a history of heart problems and had been in poor health for some time.

But Bork was a towering figure for an early generation of conservatives. In the 1960s and '70s, he argued that a liberal-dominated Supreme Court was abusing its power and remaking American life by ending prayers in public schools, by extending new rights to criminals, by ordering cross-town busing and by voiding the laws against abortion.

He was an influential legal advisor in the Nixon administration and served as a footnote to history in the Watergate scandal. When the embattled president ordered the firing of special counsel Archibald Cox, the attorney general and his deputy resigned in protest. Bork, who was in the No. 3 post as U.S. solicitor general, then carried out Nixon’s order.

But Bork’s biggest moment came during the Reagan administration in the 1980s. He left Yale and came to Washington when Reagan appointed him to the U.S. court of appeals in the District of Columbia. The job was seen as a steppingstone to the high court.

In 1986, Bork was passed over for a younger colleague when Reagan named Judge Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court. A year later, Bork’s turn came when Justice Lewis Powell, the swing vote on the closely divided court, announced his retirement.

Democrats, led by Sen. Edward Kennedy, launched an all-out attack on Bork’s nomination, saying he would set back the cause of civil rights, women’s rights and civil liberties.

The summer of 1987 saw campaign-style attacks on Bork’s reputation.  In televised hearings, the bearded, heavy-set professor tried to explain his views, but he won few converts. The Senate defeated his nomination by a 58-42 vote.

In his place, Reagan eventually chose Judge Anthony Kennedy, who was confirmed unanimously. The switch proved to have lasting consequences. Kennedy cast decisive votes to uphold Roe vs. Wade and to preserve the ban on school-sponsored prayers.

Bork stepped down from the bench a year after his defeat, but wrote several books renewing his criticism of liberalism. In the past year, he served as a chairman of Mitt Romney’s advisory committee on the judiciary and the courts.

Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

david.savage@latimes.com

Read More..

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg donating $500M in stock

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he is donating nearly $ 500 million in stock to a Silicon Valley charity with the aim of funding health and education issues.

Zuckerberg donated 18 million Facebook shares, valued at $ 498.8 million based on their Tuesday closing price. The beneficiary is the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a nonprofit that works with donors to allocate their gifts.

This is Zuckerberg’s largest donation to date. He pledged $ 100 million in Facebook stock to Newark, N.J., public schools in 2010, before his company went public earlier this year. Later in 2010, he joined Giving Pledge, an effort led by Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Warren Buffett to get the country’s richest people to donate most of their wealth. His wife, Priscilla Chan, joined with him.

In a Facebook post Tuesday, Zuckerberg, 28, said he’s “proud of the work” done by the foundation that his Newark donation launched, called Startup: Education, which has helped open charter schools, high schools and others.

With the latest contribution, he added, “we will look for areas in education and health to focus on next.” He did not give further details on what plans there may be for funds.

“Mark’s generous gift will change lives and inspire others in Silicon Valley and around the globe to give back and make the world a better place,” said Emmett D. Carson, CEO of the foundation.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Facebook CEO Zuckerberg donating $500M in stock
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

“Best Funeral Ever” premiere delayed after Newtown school shootings

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Fans of death-centric reality TV will have to wait a little longer to dig into TLC‘s “Best Funeral Ever.”

TLC has pushed back the premiere of the special to January 6 at 10/9c in light of the school shootings in Newtown, Conn. last week.

“Best Funeral Ever” was initially scheduled to premiere on December 26 at 8/7c.

“Best Funeral Ever” centers around the Golden Gate Funeral Home in Dallas, which specializes in elaborate specialty funerals catering to the deceased’s interest. In the special, a doo-wop singer famous for his rib-sauce jingle receives a barbecue-themed sendoff, while a disabled man who was unable to ride roller coasters in mortal life receives a State Fair-themed funeral.

Since last Friday’s horrific shootings, a number of programs and other entertainment-related events have been moved out of sensitivity. Syfy, for one, decided not to air its scheduled episode of “Haven” on Friday night, because it contained elements of fictionalized school violence.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: “Best Funeral Ever” premiere delayed after Newtown school shootings
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Lawyer Says Ritual Circumcision Is Protected Activity

A lawyer for Orthodox Jewish groups asked a federal judge on Tuesday to throw out a New York City regulation requiring parents to sign a consent form before their infant sons undergo a form of Jewish ritual circumcision in which the circumciser uses his mouth to remove blood from the incision.

The lawyer, Shay Dvoretzky, said the practice, which is prevalent in parts of the ultra-Orthodox community, is a constitutionally protected religious activity. He said that requiring ritual circumcisers, known collectively as mohelim, to be involved in conveying the city’s perspective on the procedure would infringe upon their rights of free speech.

“That lies at the heart of First Amendment protection,” Mr. Dvoretzky said.

But a lawyer for the city argued that the regulation was necessary and that the practice most likely caused 11 herpes infections in infants between 2004 and 2011. Two of the infected babies died; at least two others suffered brain damage.

“The health department is not looking at the religion in determining what to do about this conduct,” said Michelle L. Goldberg-Cahn, a lawyer for the city. “The city is looking at the conduct.”

The Orthodox groups, including Agudath Israel of America and the Central Rabbinical Congress, sued the city in October to block the regulation, which was approved by the New York City Board of Health in September but is suspended until a ruling is issued in this case. The groups say that the procedure is safe and that the city has not definitively linked infections to the practice.

Infectious disease experts, several of whom filed briefs in support of the regulation, widely agree that the oral contact, known in Hebrew as metzitzah b’peh, creates a risk of transmission of herpes that can be deadly to infants because of their underdeveloped immune systems.

On Tuesday, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, heard oral arguments in the case, one that pits the sanctity of ancient religious rituals against the rigors of both modern medicine and secular government regulation. She said her decision would come within a few weeks.

Her sharpest inquiries were directed at Mr. Dvoretzky, the lawyer for the Orthodox groups.

She raised a hypothetical situation in which a single religious group amputates left pinkie fingers at birth, and asked Mr. Dvoretzky whether the city would have the authority to regulate the activity. He said it would depend upon whether the practice caused immediate, serious harm.

Judge Buchwald also said there was a direct comparison to consent requirements placed on physicians when they perform a circumcision.

Mr. Dvoretzky called that an “apples and oranges” comparison, because a physician would not perform a metzitzah b’peh.

“Wait a second,” Judge Buchwald interrupted. “They can’t perform any circumcision without consent. It’s a surgery.”

Mr. Dvoretzky said the city should undertake a broad education campaign, to prevent all infant herpes infections.

But Judge Buchwald said such a campaign would have little impact, because the risk of infections is medically well-known.

Read More..

Newport Beach dock renters may withhold holiday love

Marcy Cook embraces the holiday season. The tell? Start with the teddy bears dressed as Santa. More than 1,500 stand sentry around and inside her Newport Beach waterfronthome. Garland and strings of lights threaten to strangle the place like kudzu.

"We decorate a little bit, if you haven't noticed," said Cook, 69. "It's the highlight of the year for us."

Each Christmas, Newport Harbor is ablaze in lights as homeowners go to extraordinary lengths to complement the city's annual Christmas Boat Parade — an indelible tradition that renews itself Wednesday night and continues through Sunday.

But this has been a stressful season here along the tranquil waterfront lined with multimillion-dollar homes.

An increase in city rental fees for residential docks that protrude over public tidelands created a furor when it was approved last week by the City Council.

It also prompted a call to boycott the boat parade and festival of lights by a group calling itself "Stop the Dock Tax."

"It costs us thousands of dollars to voluntarily decorate our homes and boats to bring holiday smiles to nearly 1 million people," organization Chairman Bob McCaffrey wrote to the city. "This year, we are turning off our lights and withdrawing our boats in protest of the massive new dock tax we expect the City Council to levy."

Pete Pallette, a fellow boycott proponent and harbor homeowner, told city leaders the group would call off the boycott only if the council delayed voting on the rent hike. "Otherwise," he vowed, "game on."

In a place where homes come with names and mega-yachts bob in the harbor, it might appear the wealthy are wielding a weapon most often reserved for the masses. A holiday blackout, proponents say, will underscore their displeasure.

Newport's dock fee, which has stood at $100 a year for the last two decades, will now be based on a dock's size. The city says rents will increase to about $250 for a small slip to $3,200 annually for a large dock shared by two homeowners.

"People have been paying $8 a month all these years to access what is public waters," said Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff. "That's a pretty good deal. The City Council didn't think the increase it approved was too extreme."

Many did.

They packed council meetings when the hike was discussed, accusing the city of an excessive money grab.

They brushed aside the city's rationale: Statelawmandates cities charge fair market rents for the private use of public lands, and Newport Beach was only now catching up.

And they were unmoved by arguments that the extra revenue will go exclusively to badly needed repairs to a harbor that, despite outward appearances, needs a lot of work.

The city's five-year plan for the harbor calls for $29 million in long-overdue maintenance. Its silt-filled channels haven't been fully dredged since the Great Depression. Ancient, leaky sea walls protecting neighborhoods need to be repaired or replaced.

"We have the makings of a perfect storm like they did on the East Coast" during Superstorm Sandy, said Chris Miller, the city's harbor resources manager. "The sea walls are nearing the end of their useful life."

Even with the rent increases, Newport's dock owners will contribute a tiny fraction of that cost — the rest coming from the federal government and the city's general operating fund.

As dock owners fumed over having to pay more, others recoiled at the proposed boycott of the boat parade, which dates to 1908 when a single gondola led eight canoes illuminated by Japanese lanterns around the harbor. It has now swelled to a decent-sized armada of dozens of boats — some carrying paying customers — that circle past the decorated harbor-front homes.

"The boycott is ridiculous," said Shirley Pepys, whose frontyard on Balboa Island has been taken over by a family of penguins dressed for a Hawaiian luau.

Read More..

Mind: A Misguided Focus on Mental Illness in Gun Control Debate

The gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, has been described as a loner who was intelligent and socially awkward. And while no official diagnosis has been made public, armchair diagnosticians have been quick to assert that keeping guns from getting into the hands of people with mental illness would help solve the problem of gun homicides.

Arguing against stricter gun-control measures, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and a former F.B.I. agent, said, “What the more realistic discussion is, ‘How do we target people with mental illness who use firearms?’ ”

Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, told The New York Times: “To reduce the risk of multivictim violence, we would be better advised to focus on early detection and treatment of mental illness.”

But there is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that the vast majority of people with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts. Only about 4 percent of violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness.

This does not mean that mental illness is not a risk factor for violence. It is, but the risk is actually small. Only certain serious psychiatric illnesses are linked to an increased risk of violence.

One of the largest studies, the National Institute of Mental Health’s Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, which followed nearly 18,000 subjects, found that the lifetime prevalence of violence among people with serious mental illness — like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — was 16 percent, compared with 7 percent among people without any mental disorder. Anxiety disorders, in contrast, do not seem to increase the risk at all.

Alcohol and drug abuse are far more likely to result in violent behavior than mental illness by itself. In the National Institute of Mental Health’s E.C.A. study, for example, people with no mental disorder who abused alcohol or drugs were nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts.

It’s possible that preventing people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses from getting guns might decrease the risk of mass killings. Even the Supreme Court, which in 2008 strongly affirmed a broad right to bear arms, at the same time endorsed prohibitions on gun ownership “by felons and the mentally ill.”

But mass killings are very rare events, and because people with mental illness contribute so little to overall violence, these measures would have little impact on everyday firearm-related killings. Consider that between 2001 and 2010, there were nearly 120,000 gun-related homicides, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Few were perpetrated by people with mental illness.

Perhaps more significant, we are not very good at predicting who is likely to be dangerous in the future. According to Dr. Michael Stone, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia and an expert on mass murderers, “Most of these killers are young men who are not floridly psychotic. They tend to be paranoid loners who hold a grudge and are full of rage.”

Even though we know from large-scale epidemiologic studies like the E.C.A. study that a young psychotic male who is intoxicated with alcohol and has a history of involuntary commitment is at a high risk of violence, most individuals who fit this profile are harmless.

Jeffery Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University and a leading expert in the epidemiology of violence, said in an e-mail, “Can we reliably predict violence?  ‘No’ is the short answer. Psychiatrists, using clinical judgment, are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.”

It would be even harder to predict a mass shooting, Dr. Swanson said, “You can profile the perpetrators after the fact and you’ll get a description of troubled young men, which also matches the description of thousands of other troubled young men who would never do something like this.”

Even if clinicians could predict violence perfectly, keeping guns from people with mental illness is easier said than done. Nearly five years after Congress enacted the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, only about half of the states have submitted more than a tiny proportion of their mental health records.

How effective are laws that prohibit people with mental illness from obtaining guns? According to Dr. Swanson’s recent research, these measures may prevent some violent crime. But, he added, “there are a lot of people who are undeterred by these laws.”

Adam Lanza was prohibited from purchasing a gun, because he was too young. Yet he managed to get his hands on guns — his mother’s — anyway. If we really want to stop young men like him from becoming mass murderers, and prevent the small amount of violence attributable to mental illness, we should invest our resources in better screening for, and treatment of, psychiatric illness in young people.

All the focus on the small number of people with mental illness who are violent serves to make us feel safer by displacing and limiting the threat of violence to a small, well-defined group. But the sad and frightening truth is that the vast majority of homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people in the grip of all too ordinary human aggression to whom we provide nearly unfettered access to deadly force.

Read More..

Richard Engel of NBC Is Freed in Syria

Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, and three of his crew members were freed on Monday after five days in captivity in Syria, the news organization said on Tuesday.

The journalists were unharmed. The news organization released a short statement that said, “We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country.”

The identities of the kidnappers and their motives were unknown. But an article on the NBC News Web site quotes Mr. Engel as saying their captors “were talking openly about their loyalty to the government” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Their kidnapping once again highlights the perils of reporting from Syria, which is said by the Committee to Protect Journalists to be “the world’s most dangerous place for the press.”

NBC declined to specify the number of crew members that were with Mr. Engel. Two of the crew members, John Kooistra and Ghazi Balkiz, appeared with Mr. Engel on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday morning. A third, Aziz Akyavas, spoke at a news conference in Turkey. Mr. Akyavas said in an interview on the Turkish television channel NTV that a technician who traveled with the crew was still missing. NBC did not respond to a request for comment about that report.

Mr. Engel and the crew members covertly entered Syria several times this year to report on the insurgency that is fighting Mr. Assad there. Mr. Engel was last seen on television last Thursday in a taped report from Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital, where he reported that “the Syrian regime appears to be cracking, but the rebels remain outgunned.”

In order to transmit their report in safety, Mr. Engel and his crew apparently crossed the border into Turkey. Their effort to cross back into the country on Thursday led to their capture.

About 15 men, Mr. Engel said on the “Today” show, “just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes” and “dragged us out of the car.” The kidnappers killed one of the rebels whom the crew had been traveling with, he said.

NBC’s Web site said there was “no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.”

Mr. Engel said on “Today” that the kidnappers had a plan to exchange the crew for several people being held by Syrian rebels. “We were told that they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese people who are from the Amal movement,” he said.

But the crew members were freed when the captors “ran into a checkpoint manned by members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group,” NBC’s Web site reported. “There was a confrontation and a firefight ensued. Two of the captors were killed, while an unknown number of others escaped.” The rebels then helped escort the crew to the border with Turkey.

“We are very happy to be back in Turkey,” Mr. Engel said, speaking in front of cameras at Cilvegozu border gate in southern Turkey. He added, “The last five days are the days that we want to forget.”

NBC tried to keep the crew’s disappearance a secret for several days while it sought to ascertain their whereabouts. Its television competitors and many other major news organizations, including The New York Times, refrained from reporting on the situation, in part out of concern that any reporting could worsen the danger for the crew. News outlets similarly refrained from publishing reports about a 2008 kidnapping in Afghanistan of David Rohde of The New York Times and a local reporter, Tahir Ludin. The two reporters escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity.

In the case of Mr. Engel, some Web sites reported speculation about his disappearance on Monday. NBC declined to comment until the crew members were safely out of Syria on Tuesday.

While none of the crew members suffered any physical injuries, there was “psychological pressure,” Mr. Akyavas told NTV. He said they were blindfolded, handcuffed, and “every now and then had guns pointed on our heads. It was not pleasant.”

In his comments on “Today” Mr. Engel said: “They made us choose which one of us would be shot first, and when we refused there were mock shootings. They pretended to shoot Ghazi several times.”

The crew members were also filmed for a video that showed them being held in a small, nondescript room.

Mr. Engel is perhaps the best-known foreign-based correspondent on television in the United States. Hop-scotching from Iraq to Afghanistan to Egypt and other countries in recent years, he has had more airtime than any other such correspondent at NBC, ABC or CBS. Thus the news of his kidnapping and safe release is likely to generate widespread interest from viewers.

Mr. Engel has worked for NBC since May 2003, two months into the Iraq war. He was promoted to chief foreign correspondent in 2008. At the time, the NBC News president Steve Capus said, “There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the work that Richard has done in some of the most dangerous places on earth for NBC News. His reporting, his expertise on the situation in the Middle East, his professionalism and his commitment to telling the story of what is happening there is unparalleled.”

The “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams has been among Mr. Engel’s most ardent fans. Without alluding to his disappearance, Mr. Williams brought up Mr. Engel while being interviewed onstage at a charity fund-raiser in New Jersey on Sunday night. “What I know about Richard Engel is, he’s fearless, but he’s not crazy,” Mr. Williams said. When Mr. Engel’s name came up, there was spontaneous applause from the crowd.

Brian Stelter reported from New York and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul. Bill Carter contributed reporting from New York.

Read More..

U.S. moves ahead on new downtown L.A. courthouse

Downtown Los Angeles is finally getting its new federal courthouse, and it's going to stand out amid the aging government buildings in the Civic Center.

A 550,000-square-foot courthouse — planned for the southwest corner of Broadway and 1st Street, across from the old county law library and the Los Angeles Times building — will feature a bright, serrated facade and a structural design that allow the structure to appear to float over its stone base, officials said.

It will have a public plaza along 1st Street near recently opened Grand Park. Officials say the building's design has received a "platinum" rating for energy efficiency from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The U.S. General Services Administration is moving forward on the project despite last-minute opposition from some Republicans in Congress, who question the viability of the agency's plans to sell the federal courthouse on North Spring Street to private developers. The lawmakers also questioned whether the extra courtrooms were actually necessary.

The GSA awarded a $318-million contract last week to the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Clark Construction Group, and released several renderings of the proposed design. The building will rise on a 3.6-acre lot on Broadway that city officials have long wanted to develop.

"We are moving toward the groundbreaking of a critically needed facility that will resolve long-standing security and space issues," Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-East Los Angeles) said in a statement. "At a time when we need to keep investing in our recovering economy, we expect the courthouse to create thousands of new jobs in the construction industry and related businesses."

Peter Zellner, faculty member at Southern California Institute of Architecture, noted that the courthouse design in some ways is reminiscent of Mid-Century architectural styles of other Los Angeles government centers, particularly the Wilshire Federal Building. Zellner also suggested the architects consider the courthouse plaza as part of a chain of public spaces spilling down from the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The courthouse will include 24 courtrooms and 32 judicial chambers. Along with the judges of the U.S. District Court, the building will be used by the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. attorneys' office and the Federal Public Defender.

Federal judges have been pushing for new space downtown since the late 1990s. In addition to the Spring Street courthouse, federal judges occupy space elsewhere in downtown, but they have complained about overcrowding and security issues.

Construction on the courthouse is expected to begin sometime next year, with completion set for 2016, the GSA said.

The agency also announced that it had released a formal "request for information" to solicit ideas for adaptive reuse of one of the old federal courthouses, on North Spring Street. Under the agency's plan, the 72-year-old building would be sold to a private developer, with the proceeds to help finance construction of a second federal office building next to the new courthouse.

Some real estate experts have questioned whether the exchange proposal would be feasible, saying it could be difficult for a private owner to adapt the old courthouse because of its structural issues, location and historic status. And the Republican critics of the courthouse plan expressed concern that if the GSA could not manage to sell the old courthouse, it would be stuck with a vacant building and higher costs to taxpayers.

There is still no specific timeline on when the exchange would be made, a GSA spokeswoman said, but officials remain upbeat about the plan.

"This step is just another example of GSA's commitment to providing real value to the American public," said acting GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini.

sam.allen@latimes.com

Read More..

Clearwire accepts slightly sweeter bid from Sprint

(Reuters) – Clearwire Corp agreed to sell roughly half of the company for $ 2.2 billion to majority shareholder Sprint Nextel Corp, which would then have full ownership of spectrum that will help it offer high-speed wireless services.

The $ 2.97-per-share deal is only 7 cents per share higher than a bid many minority shareholders said was too low days before. Clearwire shares tumbled 12.2 percent to $ 2.96 in morning trading on Monday.

Sprint already owns slightly more than half of Clearwire. The company said owners of 13 percent of Clearwire shares – Comcast Corp, Intel Corp and Bright House Networks LLC – had agreed to vote for the deal.

But it was not immediately clear whether Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier, could win the backing of a majority of Clearwire’s minority shareholders, which it needs to take control.

“This is not going to be popular with the minority shareholders,” said Davidson & Co analyst Donna Jaegers.

But Clearwire’s top executive told analysts on a Monday call that the company had little alternative.

“Despite our efforts we have been unable to secure new partnerships,” said Clearwire Chief Executive Officer Erik Prusch. “Our existing governance agreements prevented us from offering third parties the governance rights they desired in a partnership.”

Shareholders with more than 13 percent of Clearwire shares said last week that they were not happy with the $ 2.90-per-share offer, and some have said Sprint should offer as much as $ 5 per share.

Crest Financial, which owns more than 3 percent of Clearwire, recently filed a lawsuit to stop the company from selling itself to Sprint.

After the deal was announced on Monday, Crest said it had amended the lawsuit to make it a class action.

Another shareholder, Mount Kellett, said last week that the $ 2.90-a-share deal “grossly” undervalued Clearwire.

Clearwire, which also counts Sprint as its biggest customer, has been seeking financing for a high-speed wireless network upgrade and to keep itself afloat.

While some analysts and shareholders said Clearwire did not need to rush into a sale to Sprint, others have said that move would be its best hope for survival.

Sprint, whose shares rose 1 percent to $ 5.61 on Monday, needs Clearwire’s substantial spectrum to better arm itself against larger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.

Reuters reported last week that Japan’s Softbank Corp, which recently struck a deal to buy 70 percent of Sprint, would not consent to a bid of more than $ 2.97 per share.

Softbank said on Monday that it supported the deal.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew in New York and Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Rodney Joyce, Sriraj Kalluvila and Lisa Von Ahn)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Clearwire accepts slightly sweeter bid from Sprint
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..