Indonesia arrests 11 people suspected of planning terror attacks on US, Australian embassies

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JAKARTA, IndonesiaIndonesian police say they have arrested 11 people suspected of planning a range of terrorist attacks on domestic and foreign targets including the U.S. and Australian embassies.


National Police spokesman Maj. Gen. Suhardi Aliyus says the suspects were arrested by an anti-terror squad in raids Friday night in four provinces.












He said Saturday that police also seized bombs, explosive materials and a bomb-making manual.


He said the newly formed group had plans to target the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and a plaza near the Australian Embassy and the local office of U.S. mining giant Freeport-McMoRan. Aliyus said they also planned to attack the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya and the headquarters of a police special force in Central Java.


It was unclear how far the plans had advanced.


Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Star Silicon Valley analyst felled by Facebook IPO fallout

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The firing of Citigroup stock analyst Mark Mahaney on Friday in the regulatory fallout from Facebook Inc's initial public offering was greeted with shock and dismay in Silicon Valley, where Mahaney was a well-known and well-liked figure.


"Pretty shocked," was the reaction of Jacob Funds Chief Executive Ryan Jacob, who described Mahaney as one of the most respected financial analysts covering the Internet industry.


"I'd put him at the top. If not at the top, then near the top," said Jacob. "He really knew what to look for."


In addition to firing Mahaney, Citigroup paid a $2 million fine to Massachusetts regulators to settle charges that the bank improperly disclosed research on Facebook ahead of its $16 billion IPO in May.


The settlement agreement said Mahaney failed to supervise a junior analyst who improperly shared Facebook research with the TechCrunch news website. (Settlement agreement: http://r.reuters.com/pyj63t)


The settlement agreement also outlined an incident in which Mahaney failed to get approval before responding to a journalist's questions about Google Inc -- and told a Citigroup compliance staffer that the conversation had not occurred -- even after being warned about unauthorized conversations with the media.


Mahaney declined to comment.


Mahaney got his start in the late 1990s, during the first dot-com boom where he worked at Morgan Stanley for Mary Meeker, one of the star analysts of the time. He went on to work at hedge fund Galleon Group before moving to Citigroup in 2005. Unlike most of his New York-based peers in the analyst world, Mahaney worked in San Francisco's financial district, close to the companies and personalities at the heart of the tech industry.


Earlier this month, Mahaney was named the top Internet analyst for the fifth straight year by Institutional Investor. The review cited fans of Mahaney who praised a "systematic" investment approach that allows him to avoid the "waffling" often evidenced by other analysts.


Mahaney's Buy rating on IAC/InteractiveCorp in April 2011, when the stock traded at $33.32, allowed investors to lock in a 51 percent gain before he downgraded the stock to a Hold at $50.31 a few months later, according to Institutional Investor.


But it wasn't only his stock picks that put him in good stead. He earned kudos for simply being a nice guy.


"He's a kind and thoughtful person and that's evident in the way he deals with people," said Jason Jones of Internet investment firm HighStep Capital. "He's very well liked on Wall Street because of that."


A CAUTIOUS VIEW ON FACEBOOK


Mahaney was only indirectly involved in the incident involving the Facebook research, according to the settlement agreement by Massachusetts regulators released on Friday. But the actions of the junior analyst who worked for him provide an unusual glimpse into the type of behind-the-scenes information trading that regulators are attempting to rein in.


While the Massachusetts regulators did not identify any of the individuals by name, Reuters has learned that the incident involved TechCrunch reporters Josh Constine and Kim-Mai Cutler as well as Citi junior analyst Eric Jacobs.


Jacobs, Constine and Cutler all did not respond to requests for comments.


In early May, shortly before Facebook's IPO, Jacobs sent an email to Cutler and Constine. Constine attended Stanford University at the same time as Jacobs.


Constine, who studied social networks such as Facebook and Twitter for his 2009 Master's degree in cybersociology at Stanford, had a close friendship with Jacobs, according to the settlement agreement.


"I am ramping up coverage on FB and thought you guys might like to see how the street is thinking about it (and our estimates)," Jacobs wrote in the email. The email included an "outline" that Jacobs said would eventually become the firm's 30-40 page initiation report on Facebook.


He also included a "Facebook One Pager" document, which contained confidential, non-public information that Citigroup obtained in order to help begin covering Facebook after the IPO.


Asked by Constine if the information could be published and attributed to an anonymous source, Jacobs responded that "my boss would eat me alive," the agreement said.


A spokeswoman for AOL Inc, which owns TechCrunch, declined to answer questions on the matter, saying only that "We are looking into the matter and have no comment at this time."


Ironically, Mahaney was one of a small group of analysts at the many banks underwriting Facebook's IPO who had cautious views of the richly valued offering. Mahaney initiated coverage of the company with a neutral rating.


Analysts at the top three underwriters on Facebook's IPO - Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan - started the stock with overweight or buy recommendations.


Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Facebook had pre-briefed analysts for its underwriters ahead of its IPO, advising them to reduce their profit and revenue forecasts.


Facebook, whose stock was priced at $38 a share in the IPO, closed Friday's regular session at $21.94 and has traded as low as $17.55.


"There were tens of billions of dollars in losses based on hyping the name, a lack of skeptical information and misunderstanding the company," said Max Wolff, chief economist and senior analyst at research firm GreenCrest Capital.


"It's highly unfortunate and darkly ironic that one of the signature regulatory actions from this IPO so far involves punishing analysts for disseminating cautious information about Facebook," he added.


(Editing by Jonathan Weber, Mary Milliken and Lisa Shumaker)


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Billy Idol plays fan’s birthday party in Seattle

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SEATTLE (AP) — A Seattle man says that having Billy Idol play his 26th birthday party made for the greatest night of his life.


Michael Henrichsen spent two years persuading the British rock icon to play his party, and it paid off Friday at the packed Showbox SoDo club.












Idol guitarist Steve Stevens played him ‘Happy Birthday’ in the middle of a solo. Then Idol called Henrichsen onto the stage for a rendition of the song.


Henrichsen’s ’80s cover band opened for the show.


Idol says Henrichsen’s effort stood out from other fan requests because his campaign involved four “Billy Idol Aid” charity concerts that raised $ 13,000 for the Northwest Harvest food bank and the American Red Cross.


Idol says playing Henrichsen’s party in Seattle might help fans see another side of him.


Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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FDA finds contaminants in drug linked to meningitis

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(Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday it found “greenish black foreign matter” and other contaminants in an injectable steroid produced by the New England Compounding Center, the pharmacy at the heart of a deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak.


It also found that vials from the same bin of the steroid contained what appeared to be a “white filamentous material,” according to the report released by the FDA following inspections of the facility in October.












Massachusetts health regulators said earlier this week that they had turned up evidence of problematic procedures, record-keeping and work conditions inside the pharmacy facility.


The pharmacy is being investigated for its role in the meningitis outbreak, which has killed 25 people and infected hundreds who received injections of its preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate, a steroid used for back pain and other conditions.


The FDA report also said that NECC’s environmental monitoring program found bacteria and mold in two “clean rooms” between January 2012 and September 2012. The rooms are used in the production of sterile drug products.


(Reporting By Toni Clarke and Caroline Humer; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Steve Orlofsky)


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Obama hits Romney for ‘cradle-to-grave tax hikes and fees’

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President Barack Obama delivers a speech to supporters at a campaign rally at Elm Street Middle School in Nashua, …NASHUA, N.H. — Mocking Mitt Romney's vow to bring "big change" to Washington, President Barack Obama charged at a campaign rally here Saturday that his Republican rival was actually offering a "big re-run" of George W. Bush's policies. The embattled incumbent also hit Romney's record as governor of nearby Massachusetts, accusing him of imposing "cradle-to-grave tax hikes and fees."


"He's been running around saying he's got a five-point plan for the economy," Obama told some 8,500 people. "Turns out it's a one-point plan: Folks at the very top get to play by a different set of rules than you do."


"They get to pay lower tax rates, outsource jobs. They want to let Wall Street run wild and make reckless bets with other folks' money," the president said. "That was his philosophy when he was a CEO.  That was his philosophy as governor."


"And as President Clinton said, he does have a lot of brass because he's not talking about big change, but all he's offering is a big rerun of the same policies that created so much hardship for so many Americans," Obama said.


Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams dismissed such talk as "desperate attacks" and said they were "laughable coming from a president whose only plan for a second term is to recycle the failed policies of the last four years while raising taxes by $2 trillion."


Polls suggest that Romney has the edge among voters on which candidate would better revive the still-sputtering economy, while Obama leads on who would better defend middle-class interests. The president has spent months trying to paint his rival as an out-of-touch multi-millionaire, while Romney has portrayed his huge success as an investor as evidence he is the better candidate to spur growth.


Obama, eager to deny Romney New Hampshire's four electoral college votes, highlighted the Republican's tenure as governor of neighboring Massachusetts.


The president accused Romney of pushing a tax cut that "overwhelmingly benefited" the wealthiest 278 families in the state while raising taxes and fees in a way that disproportionately hurt the middle class.


"Now, when he's asked about this, he says, 'no, these weren't taxes, these were fees,'" Obama said.


"But keep in mind there were higher fees to be a barber, higher fees to become a nurse. There were higher fees for gas. There were higher fees for milk. There were higher fees for blind people who needed to get a certificate that they were blind. He raised fees to get a birth certificate -- which would have been expensive for me."


"He raised fees for marriage certificates and fees for funeral homes -- so there were literally cradle-to-grave tax hikes and fees," said Obama.


"As governor, Mitt Romney worked with Democrats to close a $3 billion deficit, balance four budgets while cutting taxes 19 times, create tens of thousands of new jobs, and lower the Massachusetts unemployment rate to 4.7 percent," said the Romney campaign's Williams.


"As president, Mitt Romney will bring real change to Washington," said Williams, adding that the Republican's policies will "finally deliver a real recovery."


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