Google, PE firms mull bid for Yahoo: report (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Google Inc has spoken to at least two private equity firms about possibly helping them finance a deal to buy Yahoo Inc's core business, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Google and prospective partners have held preliminary discussions but have not come up with a formal proposal, and Google may end up deciding not to pursue a bid, the source said.

It is not clear which private equity firms Google has spoken to, the WSJ said.

Representatives of Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

Any potential deal between the two biggest Internet companies would likely arouse antitrust scrutiny.

Google is interested in selling some advertising across Yahoo's websites, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft Corp is now considering financing part of a bid for Yahoo by a private equity firm, people familiar with the matter have said.

Yahoo has been in a state of chaos since it fired former CEO Carol Bartz in early September. The company retained investment banking firm Allen & Co to help conduct a "strategic review" of its business and is reportedly working with executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles to find a new CEO.

A number of potential buyers have expressed interest in a deal with Yahoo. Private equity firms Silver Lake Partners, Providence Equity Partners, Bain Capital, Hellman & Friedman, Blackstone Group, and KKR are among those likely to get a look at the limited financial data Yahoo's advisers are circulating.

(Reporting by Matthew Lewis in Chicago; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111024/wr_nm/us_google_yahoo

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'Puss In Boots' Opening: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek Visit San Francisco (PHOTOS)

On Wednesday, Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek visited San Francisco's Westfield Shopping Centre for the red carpet premiere of their new animated film, Puss In Boots.

Banderas played the namesake character in the Shrek series that inspired the film, but Puss In Boots was Hayek's first animated film. "I just went with the flow and let the great director and Antonio walk me through this experience," said Hayek In an interview with Jackie Hollywood. "It was totally new for me."

Among the attendees were Oakland Raiders Taiwan Jones and Lamarr Houston, who said they were excited about the film. "I love Shrek one, two and three," said Houston. "So I think Puss In Boots is going to be pretty good."

When asked about a possible sequel, Hayek said, "We wish we knew ourselves, but we'll find out pretty soon."

Check out our slideshow, courtesy of Drew Altizer Photography, for images from the premiere. Then watch Jackie Hollywood's on-the-scene coverage courtesy of CBS:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/23/puss-in-boots-opening_n_1027371.html

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Column: Noisy neighbors blow roof off Old Trafford

By JOHN LEICESTER

AP Sports Columnist

Associated Press Sports

updated 3:06 p.m. ET Oct. 23, 2011

MANCHESTER, England (AP) -The Alex Ferguson era isn't over at Manchester United. Still, this did feel like the beginning of the end.

A 6-1 loss. Make that a 6-1 humiliation. To Manchester City, no less.

At Old Trafford.

Ouch.

A hammering this heavy and this rare had reporters dusting off their history books. Not since, wait for it, January 1926 had City inflicted such pain on its cross-town rival in the league at its home ground where so many teams go away empty-handed.

"I'm shattered, I can't believe it," said Ferguson, who wasn't even born the last time the Blues pulled this off. "There's a lot of embarrassment in that dressing room and quite rightly so."

So what does this mean, what's the bigger picture?

Well, despite the astounding scoreline, it doesn't mean that English football's center of gravity has permanently shifted a few miles east to the blue side of Manchester. At least not yet. United still has the bigger global brand, the bigger global following and an Aladdin's cave full of trophies. City is not even close to taking all of that away.

Still, City look increasingly likely to make the last few years of Ferguson's reign at United - he turns 70 in December, in his 25th year in charge - very uncomfortable indeed.

City says that its aim is to become one of the best teams in Europe. As far as statements of intent go, beating the Premier League champion at home so comprehensively was the football equivalent of planting a flag on Everest.

The hundreds of millions of dollars that an Abu Dhabi billionaire has thrown at City in the three years since he bought the No.2 club in Manchester have turned a weakling into a muscle-bound force that can now call itself United's equal on the pitch. Financial doping clearly works.

Sheik Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan generally doesn't attend City's matches but his deep pockets are working wonders. The Glazer family which owns United was at Sunday's game but has loaded the club with debt. Is that one of the big differences now separating these sides? Certainly, there was a feeling that not only was United outplayed and outclassed on Sunday, it has been outspent, too.

Yaya Toure, purchased from European champion Barcelona, and David Silva, bought from Valencia, were superb in City's midfield, making United's Darren Fletcher and the Brazilian Anderson look as thinly spread as butter on toast. One of United's greatest strengths in the Ferguson years has been identifying, nurturing and unleashing young talents like defender Chris Smalling and winger Ashley Young, who both played Sunday.

But United needs a Toure- or Silva-like figure in the middle of the pitch. With each City goal, not signing World Cup finalist Wesley Sneijder from Inter Milan and letting City lure Samir Nasri from Arsenal looked like larger and larger mistakes from United.

That City would win never looked in doubt after United's Jonny Evans was sent off for yanking on Mario Balotelli's arm early in the second half.

You should not trust Balotelli with your car or your house, because he's liable to wreck them. Someone - seemingly either him or a friend - set off a firework in his house, causing a fire, in the early hours of Saturday, which certainly is a novel way to prepare for such a match.

But, with a ball at his feet, in front of goal, Balotelli is becoming very dependable. He made the day for headline writers - "Mario Fireworks!" "Burning Balotelli!" - by scoring twice. After the first goal, Balotelli lifted up his jersey to reveal a T-shirt underneath emblazoned with the question "Why always me?"

"He's crazy," said City manager Roberto Mancini. But as long as he scores like this, Balotelli's quirkiness will be secondary.

Mancini, as is customary, brought what he said was a "very good" bottle of wine from his native Italy to share with Ferguson after the game. For the Scotsman, it must have tasted as sour as vinegar.

"It was our worst ever day. It's the worst result in my history, ever. Even as a player I don't think I ever lost 6-1," Ferguson said.

He added: "You have to recover. The history of Manchester United is "another day" and we will recover. That kind of defeat will make an impact on the players."

One wouldn't expect anything less of Ferguson's players. But the reality is that City now has a 5-point league lead over United. Even though the season is still young, United could be chasing blue shirts from now until next May.

Those like European football boss Michel Platini who argue that the massive deficit spending by clubs like City is a mortal danger to the sport's status quo and overall good health could point to this result, nod wisely, and feel vindicated. City fans could retort that United was long overdue to be knocked off its pedestal. Singing their hearts out in United's ground, they didn't care that this win was bought as much as it was earned.

But being able to purchase some of the world's best players as easily as a kid in a sweet shop is only part of why City is becoming so strong. A lot of the credit goes to Mancini, who is making his big name and big ego stars play and work together as a team. He could have come to Old Trafford looking for a draw, played it safe. Instead, he fielded an attacking lineup with both Balotelli and Sergio Aguero up front. Mancini said studying video of United had shown him that Ferguson's team this season often concedes opportunities to score.

United, vulnerable.

Those are not words that have been used often together in recent years.

That could be about to change.

---

John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester(at)ap.org or follow him at twitter.com/johnleicester

? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Man City humiliates United 6-1

Manchester City thrashed fierce rival Manchester United 6-1 at Old Trafford on Sunday to hand Alex Ferguson his heaviest defeat in 25 years in charge.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45007369/ns/sports-soccer/

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British couple drowns in Spanish flash flood (AP)

MADRID ? An elderly British couple drowned after being swept away by a flash flood that coursed through a street market in southeastern Spain, officials said Saturday.

Twenty-five minutes of heavy rain inland of the town of Finestrat caused a torrent to rush downhill Friday through the area in which the market had been set up, regional interior ministry representative Jose Perez Grau said.

Vendors and visitors alike were caught by surprise because it had not been raining in the town itself, he said.

The married couple's ages were given as 70 and 72 but they were not identified. The Diario de Informacion newspaper said they had been staying at a seaside hotel with relatives in Benidorm, 7 miles (12 kilometers) east of Finestrat.

Citing witnesses, the paper said the couple had gotten tangled in a canvas awning that had come loose and were dragged downstream, ending up trapped under a vehicle submerged in three feet (one meter) of water.

Their bodies were only discovered once the water had receded, the paper reported. Five other people were injured.

Britain's Foreign Office said it was providing consular assistance to the couple's family.

___

Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/britain/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111022/ap_on_re_eu/eu_spain_flooding

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Apple design exhibit at MKG Hamburg

Michael T. Rose of TUAW has posted a fantastic look Apple design exhibit at MKG Hamburg. If you love Apple and Jony Ive design, are intrigued by the influences of Braun and Dieter Rams, or just want to see an amazing array of everything from iPod to Mac, check...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/O1dDJtXPBJ0/

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Achtung: German satellite to crash down tonight, won't land in Germany

Achtung: German satellite to crash down tonight, won't land in Germany
As if it weren't hard enough keeping your house safe from debt collectors these days, now you have something else to worry about: a falling German satellite called ROSAT. The German Aerospace Center has estimated that the hunk of decommissioned, extra-orbital metal will enter the atmosphere sometime between 7:30pm ET tonight and 1:30am ET tomorrow. It's unknown whether any of the thing will survive re-entry, but the 1.7 ton telescope mirror onboard very well may, striking the surface at a hasty 17,398MPH. The agency doesn't know where it will fall, but did reassuringly say that it won't hit Europe -- German scientists basically telling the rest of the world to spend all night worrying while they doze away, peacefully. At least it won't be taking any of its orbital brethren with it...

Update: Looks like it landed in the Indian Ocean on Saturday night.

Achtung: German satellite to crash down tonight, won't land in Germany originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 18:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Niagara Falls envisions profit in 'fracking' waste (AP)

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. ? The city that put Love Canal and Superfund in the environmental lexicon may get back into the business of dealing with toxic waste ? this time willingly.

With New York considering allowing hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as part of a natural-gas boom taking place across the Northeast, the Niagara Falls Water Board is examining whether it would make economic sense to become a destination for treatment and disposal of the wastewater that's a byproduct of the process.

A specialized treatment plant that once served the city's chemical industry is seeing little use, and officials see the potential for dollar signs. If the plan is approved, the treated water could soon be crashing over the city's namesake waterfalls on its way to Lake Ontario and the Atlantic Ocean.

"Since we do have a unique kind of wastewater treatment plant that's very much under-loaded, we're looking into the possibility that, with the addition of other treatment processes, maybe our plant would be much more amenable to accepting this waste than your typical municipal biological plant," said Richard Roll, the public benefit corporation's director of technical and regulatory services.

Many have criticized the idea, including former Love Canal resident Lois Gibbs, who became a national voice for environmental health. She said she wondered if city officials would ever learn.

"They're moving away from the chemical industry because the chemical industry is moving away from them, and it's time to start a new economy," Gibbs said by phone Thursday from Falls Church, Va., where she's executive director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice. "And the new economy is certainly not taking chemical waste."

Fracking forces millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, deep into shale formations beneath Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Texas and other states. Its use has increased dramatically in recent years, raising concerns about the potential impact on water quality. Critics say fracking could poison water supplies, while the natural gas industry says it's been used safely for decades.

Liquid that comes out of the drilling wells is highly salty and contaminated with substances such as barium, strontium and radium and other things that can be damaging to the environment. Millions of barrels of wastewater must be treated, and municipal sewage treatment plants can't remove contaminants as efficiently as some of the treatment facilities that specialize in oil and gas industry waste.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it will draft standards for wastewater that drillers would have to meet before sending it to treatment plants.

In Niagara Falls, environmental groups and others say importing chemical-laden waste should be the last thing Niagara Falls should consider, given its experience with the Love Canal environmental disaster.

An entire neighborhood was emptied in the 1970s after toxins dumped by Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corp. into an abandoned canal in the 1940s and '50s were found to have seeped into basements and backyards, creating panic over birth defects and cancer. President Jimmy Carter declared a federal emergency in 1978, and in 1980 the Superfund cleanup act was born.

Once treated, the fracking wastewater, to be brought in by truck or rail, would either be discharged into the Niagara River upstream of Niagara Falls or be reused in drilling, Roll said. The Niagara River flows between lakes Erie and Ontario, forming the border between western New York and Ontario.

A coalition of local opponents submitted 25 questions to the water board, and about 15 members attended a board meeting Thursday night hoping for answers about the potential environmental impacts to the river and adjoining lakes, costs, safety, possible impacts on human health and the handling of radiation brought to the surface from deep shale wells.

"We should be learning from past mistakes instead of risking our water so we can accept New York state's hydrofracking waste," said Rita Yelda, an organizer for Food & Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group.

Any economic pop would be welcome in this careworn former honeymoon hotspot, a city of about 50,000 in the last census that has seen its fortunes decline over the past half-century.

In its heyday of the late 1950s and early 1960s, more than 100,000 people lived here, but as the region's manufacturing industry rusted out and other destinations like Las Vegas blossomed, the city by the falls largely faded from view.

City leaders have already turned to casinos and the state's new same-sex marriage law to try to reverse course and put a charge into a per capita income of about $19,000, compared to $30,000 statewide.

"Niagara Falls is known for its tourism, its beautiful scenery," Yelda said. "A large part of their revenue is tourism, people coming in to see Niagara Falls. How will that be impacted by the increased truck traffic and what they're releasing into Niagara Falls?"

The Council on Canadians, a social justice advocacy group, also is among those pushing Niagara Falls to scrap the idea.

"Last year the (United Nations) passed two resolutions recognizing water as a human right, and this proposal to treat fracking fluids threatens people's human right to safe and clean drinking water," the Ottawa-based group said in a Sept. 22 letter to the water board.

The board took no action Thursday.

Earlier in the day, Roll stressed the board is only just beginning to research feasibility testing, regulatory requirements and potential revenue "to make sure it's not just workable but it makes sense for everyone to participate."

The amount of revenue that could be generated by treatment would vary depending on the process used to treat the frackwater.

The Niagara Falls treatment plant was designed to handle waste from the city's once-booming base of electrochemical, organic chemical, ceramics and electrometallurgical plants, Roll said. It already processes imported landfill leachate from three customers that bring the waste by truck, he said.

"We've been developing that trade for the past 15 years or so, and that has had the same effect," he said. "It's unused capacity that is sitting there waiting to be taken advantage of, and we have a duty to try to make our utility as economically viable as possible for everyone."

New York environmental regulators last month formally issued proposed regulations for hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale and scheduled four public hearings. The state hasn't allowed fracking since it began drafting new permitting rules three years ago.

In neighboring Pennsylvania, nearly 4,000 wells have been drilled in the past few years, and tens of thousands more are planned.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/environment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111021/ap_on_re_us/us_gas_drilling_frackwater

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Steve Jobs Bio: Its 6 Most Surprising Reveals

Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs doesn't goes on sale until Monday, but advanced copies have been dribbling out telling insights and factoids about Apple's former CEO. Enjoy these surprising peeks into the life and psyche of?the 21st century's most famous, if not celebrated, CEO.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/9HZN_M1Dhjw/

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Fall TV Popularity Contest: Will You Re-Elect Boss? (omg!)

Spielberg's Tintin film targets new audiences Robert-Jan Bartunek - Reuters - Sat, Oct 22, 2011 7:33 AM PDT

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Steven Spielberg's computer animated 3D adaptation of Belgian comic book hero Tintin premiered in Brussels on Saturday, aiming to capture a new global?? More??Spielberg's Tintin film targets new audiences

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