Costa Rica: Strong 7.9 earthquake hits!

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica Sept 5 | Wed Sep 5, 2012
(Reuters) - A strong 7.9 earthquake rocked Costa Rica on Wednesday, rattling buildings and cutting power in some areas of the capital of San Jose, a Reuters correspondent and the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

Colombia's 'Queen of Cocaine' shot to death

Associated Press-BOGOTA (AP) — Griselda Blanco, a convicted drug trafficker who was once known as the "Godmother" and the "Queen of Cocaine," has been shot to death by an unidentified gunman, police in Colombia said Tuesday.

Col. Mauricio Cartagena of Medellin's metropolitan police said Tuesday that the 69-year-old was killed at a butcher shop in the city on Monday.

Cartagena said a man approached Blanco at the shop and fired before escaping on a motorcycle driven by another man. She died on her way to the hospital.

He said the police hadn't identified a firm motive for the killing.

"We don't know why they killed her, but the first hypothesis would be revenge or a settling of accounts," Cartagena said, referring to her past involvement in drug trafficking. Blanco had no charges pending against her in her native Colombia, he added.

Blanco was among the first Colombian women to traffic cocaine to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. She had been deported back to Colombia in 2004 after serving nearly 20 years behind bars in the United States for drug trafficking and three drug-related killings.

She served three concurrent sentence after pleading no contest in 1998 to second-degree murder charges. Authorities said Blanco arranged three contract killings in 1982 that took the lives of toddler Johnny Castro, 2, and drug dealers Alfredo and Grizel Lorenzo.

The child died when bullets meant for his father, Jesus Castro, hit the boy instead, police said. She already had been serving prison time for cocaine trafficking when she entered her plea in the killings.

U.S. authorities have described Blanco as a charter member of the "cocaine cowboys" who engaged in drug trafficking, contract killings and gangland shootouts in South Florida in the 1980s. She was also once known for her love of shopping and beauty salons.

Blanco was reportedly a fan of the film "The Godfather," naming one of her sons Michael Corleone, the name of the character played by Al Pacino in the film.

Knives out for Facebook CFO

Andrew Ross Sorkin

David Ebersman signed off on Facebook's IPO. As the share price plummets, he - more than anyone - has much to answer for, writes Andrew Ross Sorkin.It is David Ebersman's fault. There is just no way around it. Ebersman is Facebook's well-liked, boyish-looking 41-year-old chief financial officer. He's not as well known as Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, or Sheryl Sandberg, its chief operating officer and recently appointed director.

But when it came to Facebook's catastrophe of an initial public offering - the stock reached a new low on Friday, closing at $US18.06 - it was Ebersman, not Zuckerberg or Sandberg, who was ultimately the one pulling the strings.

Now, three months after the offering, the company has lost more than $US50 billion in market value.
The Facebook crew are not so happy now.

The Facebook crew are not so happy now. Photo: AP

To put that in perspective, that's more market value than Lehman Brothers gave up in the entire last year before it filed for bankruptcy.
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A lot of ink has been spilled over Facebook's IPO, with investors and pundits mostly pointing the finger at the Wall Street banks, particularly Morgan Stanley, which led the offering, and at Nasdaq, whose numerous computer glitches on Facebook's first day of trading undermined confidence in the stock. They clearly deserve blame.

Ebersman's name, however, is mentioned only occasionally, usually in passing and typically only among Silicon Valley's cognoscenti.

And yet if there is a single individual more responsible than any other for the staggering mispricing of Facebook's IPO, it is Ebersman. He signed off on the ever-increasing offer price, which ended up at $US38 a share after the company had originally planned a price range of $US29 to $US34.

He pushed to flood the market with 25 per cent more shares than originally planned in the final days before the offering. And since then, as the point person for investors, he has done little to articulate how or why the company's strategy will lift the share price any time soon.

At a time when investors are looking for some semblance of accountability on Wall Street and in corporate America, it is remarkable that nobody - no bankers, no one at Nasdaq, no one at Facebook - has been fired for botching the offering.

Zuckerberg reportedly told his employees after the IPO, ''So, you've heard we're firing David?'' But it was only a joke.

Facebook's falling share price is not just a problem for investors; it is quickly creating real questions inside the company about its ability to retain and attract talented engineers, the lifeblood of any technology company.

Employees who joined the company starting in 2010, for example, are now holding onto restricted shares that were granted at a higher price - $US24.10 - than the current trading price. (It should be noted that these are restricted stock units, not underwater stock options, so they do still have real value but not nearly what the employees had expected.)

Employees with some 2 billion shares will have the opportunity to begin selling them soon, which is one reason Facebook shares have been depressed lately.

A spokesman for Facebook, Elliot Schrage, declined to comment and would not make Ebersman available.

Ebersman appears to have badly misjudged the demand for Facebook's IPO. He was aided by errant advice from a cadre of banking advisers, who all had an incentive to sell as many shares as possible at the highest price possible. Morgan Stanley liked $US38 a share, JPMorgan Chase thought the shares could be sold for even more, while Goldman Sachs thought they should be sold for slightly less - but all of them quickly jumped on board when Ebersman made his final decision.

Determining the price of an IPO is as much an art as a science. After a company's roadshow presentations, investors indicate how many shares they plan to buy. They typically ask for more shares than they expect to receive, sometimes twice as many. But in the case of Facebook, investors, anticipating huge demand, put in requests for triple or quadruple the number of shares they expected to get.

The bankers - and Ebersman - did not seem to appreciate what was happening. They seem to have believed their own hype and took those orders as real, giving them the misplaced confidence to push the IPO to the highest possible price and issue more shares.

None of this is meant to suggest that Ebersman is dumb or unqualified. A graduate of Brown who was the chief financial officer of Genentech when he was just 34, Ebersman is bright, perhaps even brilliant. He was recruited to Facebook by Sandberg, which was considered quite a coup at the time. He should clearly be given credit for negotiating favourable and extraordinarily large credit lines - some $US8 billion worth - with Wall Street banks, which could provide the company with an important lifeline should the economy and the company's fortunes suffer.

The disclosures in the company's IPO prospectus, which were Ebersman's responsibility, were, for the most part, pretty transparent, giving investors a good sense of the business, despite all the hype. And the IPO, for all its failures, filled Facebook's coffers with some $US10 billion.

Still, Ebersman has his work cut out for him as he tries to regain the trust of shareholders. He recently came to New York to talk with big investors, including hedge funds and institutional investors. Some invitations for meetings were oddly sent out on Thursday night for meetings on Friday. Given that it was summer, some investors sent their junior analysts.

When Facebook's IPO first started to appear troubled in May, I purposely avoided weighing in. Frankly, I thought it was too soon to judge.

But we have passed the pivotal three-month mark.

Statistically, the three-month mark is a much better predictor of a company's future share price than any of the closing prices in the first week or two. According to Richard Peterson, of Capital IQ, 67 per cent of technology companies whose shares lagged their IPO price after 90 days were still laggards after a year. Until Facebook's stock rebounds, Ebersman will be feeling the pressure.

Movie Revenues Down From Last Summer Despite Blockbusters

The number of people going to the movies dipped noticeably in North America this summer, putting increased pressure on the final four months of 2012 to bolster the bottom line.

According to preliminary estimates, 533.5 million tickets were sold this summer, down 4 percent from last year and the worst turnout since 1993. The lowest attendance before now came in summer 2010, when there were 534.4 tickets sold.

Total summer revenues also slipped. Initial estimates show the domestic box office generating $4.278 in billion in sales, down roughly 3 percent from last summer's record $4.4 billion.

Final revenue and attendance figures will be released this week.

Summer 2012 was marked by dramatic highs and lows. Disney and Marvel Studios' The Avengers, opening May 4, kicked off the season in high style, smashing records and finishing Labor Day weekend with a worldwide gross of $1.5 billion, including a domestic haul north of $620 million.

Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures' The Dark Knight Rises also is a mega hit, earning north of $1 billion worldwide through Labor Day and edging past The Dark Knight. However, Dark Knight Rises did notably less business domestically than Dark Knight did in 2008 ($433.2 million versus $533.2 million).

The gap between domestic and foreign was even more pronounced with 20th Century Fox's Ice Age: Continental Drift, which has grossed north of $828 million to date globally -- including more than $672 million overseas. Domestically, the film has earned $156.1 million.

Dark Knight Rises no doubt left some money on the table because of the Aurora theater shooting during a midnight screening of Christopher Nolan's final Batman pic. It wasn't the only film impacted by the tragedy, however. Family films in particular took a hit, as did late night shows overall.

Avengers, Dark Knight Rises and Continental Drift will generate big profits for their respective companies, as will sleeper hit Ted, from Universal and MRC, and Warners' Magic Mike.

The summer saw several all-out bombs, including Battleship, Rock of Ages and Dark Shadows. There also were a slew of disappointments domestically, including Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Dictator and Total Recall.

Hollywood studios rebooted a number of franchises to mixed results. Sony successfully relaunched  its marquee superhero franchise with The Amazing Spider-Man, while Universal has claimed success with The Bourne Legacy. Fox has said it will make Prometheus sequel; Sony has yet to announce specific plans for a follow up to Men in Black 3.

While summer box office revenues are down in North America, the year overall is still running ahead of last year, thanks to a strong winter and spring. Yearly revenues are roughly $7.5 million, up more than 3.3 percent over last year.

Fire forces more than 12,000 to evacuate; burns 3,600 acres in Angeles National forest

By Brian Day and Joe Smilor, Staff Writers

Brush fire in the San Gabriel Mountains in the Angeles National Forest above Glendora on Sunday, Sept. 2, 2012.

Angeles National Forest north of Glendora forced the evacuation of more than 12,000 people and burned more than 3,600 acres, authorities said Sunday.

Most of those evacuated where visiting the area for the the Labor Day weekend, where recreational activities abound.

Highway 39 in the Angeles National Forest was closed Sunday and will remain shut through today.

Fire officials said Sunday evening that a shift in the fire's direction lessened danger to homes and residents in the San Gabriel Valley foothills.

With the shift from its original northeast direction to the north, officials said they had no immediate fears that the fire would threaten any foothill communities, such as Azusa, San Dimas and Glendora.

Smoke could been seen for miles in the San Gabriel Valley, Inland Empire and High Desert, where people reported falling ash.

Two firefighters suffered minor injures and there was no reports of damaged structures, officials said.

The fire comes 11 years and a day after the Sept. 1, 2001, Curve Fire which burned in the same area, officials said. The fire burned more than 25,000 acres and burned more than 140 structures.

Three weeks later, another wild fire broke out in the same area and scorched more

The Williams Fire sends a plume of smoke as it rips through the San Gabriel Mountains in the Angeles National Forest. (Thomas R. Cordova/Staff Photographer)
than 35,000 acres before it merged with the still burning Curve Fire.

Sunday's blaze, which possibly began as a car fire, began sending smoke into the sky shortly after 2:15 p.m. from East Fork Road in Azusa Canyon.

The Camp Williams Resort and River Community rehabilitation center were evacuated as a precaution, said Kirk Smith of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department.

About 300 U.S. Forest Service and Los Angeles County firefighters, with the help of eight water-dropping air craft, fought the fire Sunday, Nathan Judy of the U.S. National Forest Service said.

"The area up here is really steep, rugged terrain," he added.

Shaun Rollan of the Angeles National Forest said there is no containment in sight and the blaze was moving toward Sheep Wilderness Area. The terrain there is called "extremely dangerous."

"The heat is not helping," he said.

Lori Felts, 50, of Covina, heard about the fire and drove to the area to see what was going on.

"They are great heroes," Felts said of the firefighters battling the blaze.

"How they responded is beautiful," she said.

For more information on the fire call 626-574-5208 or visit inciweb.org
Staff Writer Peter Fullam contributed to this story.

For more information please visit: http://www.smokeybear.com/

Obama to Eastwood: No hard feelings

President Obama is still a fan of Clint Eastwood.

The president, in an interview with USA Today, suggested he was not offended by the actor's performance during the closing night of the Republican National Convention -- in which Eastwood engaged in a one-man repartee with an empty chair meant to represent Obama.

"I am a huge Clint Eastwood fan," the president said.

"He is a great actor, and an even better director," Obama added, giving particular praise for his recent movies, which include "Invictus," "Gran Torino" and "Million Dollar Baby."

The president said in the interview that organizers are planning to play it "pretty straight" during his party's national convention this coming week in Charlotte, N.C.

"One thing about being president or running for president -- if you're easily offended, you should probably choose another profession," Obama said.

Eastwood brought down the house in Tampa when he launched into a scathing routine in which he bantered with an empty chair, challenging the invisible president over the state of the economy and other grievances. The routine, though, prompted a backlash from the Hollywood community and some in the media.

Springsteen's Wrecking Ball Tour Comes to Philly

By Jackie Gailey

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 09: Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt and The E Street Band perform at Madison Square Garden on April 9, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage)
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Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band will perform Sunday and Monday at Citizens Bank Park.

"The Boss" and the band have been touring the country, promoting their latest album "Wrecking Ball", all summer.

Billboard Magazine pointed out the band's latest stop in Philly will set a remarkable milestone. Springsteen and his E Street Band will become the first act to perform in every major live music venue in Philadelphia.

Billboard gathered the stats and reports Springsteen played the Spectrum 36 times, the Wells Fargo Center 11 times, three times at Lincoln Financial Field, twice at Veterans Stadium and once at JFK Stadium. Springsteen has performed nine times at the Tower Theater and once at the Electric Factory.

Both shows at Citizens Bank Park start at 7:30 p.m.

SEPTA will add trips on the Broad Street line for both shows. Trips will run every 10 minutes during the hour leading up to the shows.