EADS says Berlin move clears air, eyes alternative (Reuters)

DUBAI (Reuters) ? The chief executive of European aerospace group EADS (EAD.PA)said a decision by the German government to take a 7.5 percent stake lifted uncertainty over the group's shareholder structure but that the management had proposed a long-term alternative.

"The decision clarifies the evolution of the controlling shareholding in Germany and ends some uncertainty," Chief Executive Louis Gallois told reporters at the Dubai Air Show.

Gallois struck a more conciliatory tone than his probable successor, Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders, who last week criticized the move as a step in "completely the wrong direction" as EADS tries to wean itself off state backing.

Enders is expected to succeed Gallois in 2012.

Germany said last week state bank KfW would buy half of a 15 percent stake held by carmaker Daimler to help maintain a Franco-German balance in Europe's largest aerospace group.

Daimler on one side, and a combination of the French state with 15 percent and media group Lagardere (LAGA.PA) with 7.5 percent on the other, jointly control the Airbus parent group.

Daimler votes with 22.5 percent of the stock but had already sold an economic stake in a third of this, or 7.5 percent, to a consortium of banks and kept 15 percent.

The deal struck last week after Chancellor Angela Merkel's minority coalition partners dropped their opposition will allow Daimler to reduce its fully owned stake to 7.5 percent in 2012.

The decision is seen as a temporary move to allow Daimler to focus on its core carmaking business, but industry experts expect the new structure to stay in place for some time.

Gallois said the EADS management had nonetheless proposed a long-term way of allowing the company to remove its current shareholder pact and give core shareholders freedom to sell their shares or remain invested in the company.

"We have put forward a long-term solution which would allow balance to be maintained by other means so that all shareholders would be treated equally and the core shareholders can buy or sell on the market as they wish," he said.

EADS was created from a merger of French, German and Spanish aerospace assets in 2000. Besides owning the world's largest commercial airplane manufacturer, it makes French nuclear weapons, German fighters and European space rockets.

Its delicate structure is kept in place by a shareholder pact designed to protect EADS from takeover and guarantee Franco-German balance, an objective that had to overcome bitter in-fighting through the first half of its existence.

The pact also limits the influence of the French government because at the time EADS was formed Daimler was suspicious of any state involvement in the group's affairs.

Replacing the pact is not easy because Dutch law, under which EADS is incorporated, prohibits governments from maintaining a last-resort "golden share" -- a veto right used in some countries to protect national security as an alternative to having large blocks of core shareholders.

Gallois said earlier this year the company was looking at an equivalent system to the golden share and sources familiar with the matter have said it could involve a ceiling on voting rights in the event of a takeover threat or other key events.

But legal experts say voting ceilings have few precedents in the Netherlands and France's government does not show any sign of being ready to sell, meaning the necessary political support for a further shake-up could take a while to develop.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher, Christiaan Hetzner; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111113/bs_nm/us_eads_germany

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[OOC] This is why we don't date the other side

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Ask.com (for iPhone)

Jeeves may no longer be the face of search engine Ask.com in the U.S. market (that good fellow is, however, still serving up information in the U.K.), but Ask, fondly remembered as an early Web go-to, continues to lend a helping hand on the desktop?and now on iOS devices, too. The free Ask.com iPhone app brings the website's question-answering feature set to mobile users, with voice search and data culled from websites and real people who are a part of the Ask.com community. The updated app returns results quickly, provides a good amount of information, and has enhanced social networking elements,?but it still lacks app and barcode search, features that play prominent roles in Google Search (Free, 4 stars), Nuance Dragon Go! (Free, 4 stars), and Bing for iPhone (Free, 4.5 stars).

Related StoryCheck out?The Best iPhone Apps

The Setup Process
You start the Ask.com experience by either signing up for an account, logging in with your Facebook or LinkedIn credentials, or skipping the process entirety. The benefit of creating an account or logging in via Facebook or LinkedIn is that you can interact with the Ask.com community by answering community questions. I logged in with my Facebook user name and password, and after doing so, was prompted to fill in three fields: "Areas of Expertise or Interest," "Places Lived Or Visited," and "Favorite Movies, Music, Or TV Shows." I filled out the blank spaces with information?gadgets, apps, comics, and a variety of nerd topics?and tapped "Done."

Ask.com features a simple blue and white interface with the red and white Ask logo positioned to the upper-left portion of the screen. A search box is positioned to the right of the logo in which you can key in a question; to the right of the search box and to the right of that is a mic, that when tapped, lets you verbally ask a question. Just south of that strip are three tabs: "Recent" (which lets you see the most recently asked questions), "By Connections" (which lets you view questions asked by a circle of your Ask.com friends?an account is required for this), and "By Categories" (Arts, Computers, Relationships, and more). Tapping a category displays a list of questions asked, as well as any available answers.

Asking Questions, Getting Answers
You can ask a question in two ways?by keying in a question or speaking it. When I asked "What's the capital of Kenya?" Ask.com quickly and accurately returned the answer in the form of links and excerpts from Ask, Answerbag, and Wikipedia. Ask also did so when I tried to stump it with some more obscure questions, such as "How old is Donkey Kong?" and "Where was Christian Bale born?" Nice. Even more impressive is the app's ability to understand spoken words; when I asked those same questions verbally, Ask.com returned the same results, and almost as quickly, too. Very impressive. As someone with large mitts, typing on the iPhone can sometimes prove troublesome, so having the option to perform speech-based searches is a huge benefit. Note: Vocal questions are supported by the iPhone or 4th generation iPod touch.

The results page has an "Ask the Community" tab that, when tapped, inserts your question into a form so that it'll be submitted to the Ask.com user base. You can pick keywords, so that Ask.com can send them to people with the appropriate expertise. When I posed the question "Is Obama a socialist?" to the Ask.com community (I figured that a search engine wouldn't have a definitive answer for such a hotly-debated topic) the app automatically inserted the "socialist" and "socialism" keywords. Ask.com pushed the varied community responses to my iPhone, which I appreciated; it would've been a bit tedious to continue checking back for answers. Ask.com's community-based features are far helpful than Bing for iPhone's Facebook and Twitter implementation that as it lets you ask specific questions, not just receives results from your circle.

The only downside to my testing was that the app crashed twice within a half hour time frame, and occasionally throughout my several weeks' testing time. It also lacked the visual search features, so if you're keen on that, you'll have to look at Bing or Google.

Fresh Features
New to version 2.3 are a number of features that improve the Ask.com for iPhone experience in terms of community and usability. One of the biggest changes is the deep dive into social networking; you can now follow users of interest (by clicking the large "Follow" button that's prominently displayed on their profile pages) and share questions (and the related answers) via Twitter and e-mail thanks to the app's iOS 5 compatibility. You can now edit posts (within 15 minutes of posting them) and tinker settings to have questions and answers pushed to your iPhone's home screen. Perhaps best of all, the app is far more stable; it didn't crash at all in our time with it. That was a very welcomed change.

Should You Download Ask.com?
If you find yourself frequently in need of an answer while on the go, Ask.com is a very solid solution. It returns questions (both those entered via text or voice) quickly and accurately, and the push notifications are quite helpful. It still lacks visual search (a feature in which the Editors' Choice award-winning Bing excelled), but don't let it deter you from trying out this handy app.

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Islamist kills 7, self in Kazakhstan (AP)

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan ? A radical Islamist killed seven people, including five law enforcement officers, in a rampage Saturday in Kazakhstan's southern city of Taraz, authorities said. The suspect blew himself up as officers moved in to arrest him.

The shootout and bombing is the latest in a recent string of Islamist-related attacks in Kazakhstan and will deepen worries of a mounting terrorist threat in the former Soviet Central Asian nation.

Kazakhstan has been largely untroubled by Islamist-related violence, but the past few months have seen an anomalous spike in attacks that authorities have tied to radical organizations.

The prosecutor general's office said in a statement that the killings began in the morning when the suspect opened fire and killed two security service officers who were tailing him.

Authorities said the attacker, identified only as Kariyev, later attacked a weapons store, killing the owner and a customer. He then commandeered a vehicle and shot dead two police officers.

Kariyev subsequently returned to his home, where he picked up a grenade launcher that he then used to fire on a local branch of the Committee for National Security, the successor agency to the KGB.

"As an attempt was made to disarm Kariyev, he blew himself up, which resulted in the death of police captain Baitasov, who led the platoon engaged in the capture," the statement said.

Kazakhstan, a vast oil-rich and mainly Muslim nation of 17 million people along Russia's southern border, had been all but untouched by Islamist violence since gaining independence in 1991. But the killing of two police officers in western Kazakhstan in June was linked by authorities to indigenous terrorist groups.

That prompted security operations in which two more police officers and nine suspected terrorists were killed.

Most recently, the Jund al-Khilafah militant group claimed responsibility for two blasts in late October in the western oil town of Atyrau. Only one person ? the man engaged in setting the bombs ? was killed.

Jund al-Khilafah had previously warned that it intended to engage in a terror campaign in Kazakhstan if the authorities declined to overturn what it claims is a ban on wearing the Islamic veil. Kazakh authorities deny that there is such a ban.

Authorities did, however, respond to the wave of violence in the summer by swiftly passing a law that tightens registration rules for religious groups. Supporters of the bill said it would help combat religious extremism.

Passage of the law marked a reversal of President Nursultan Nazarbayev's earlier attempts to cast Kazakhstan as a land of religious tolerance.

___

Associated Press writer Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed to this report from Moscow.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/terrorism/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111112/ap_on_re_as/as_kazakhstan_terror_attack

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Acupuncture can prevent radiation-induced chronic dry mouth, study finds

ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2011) ? When given alongside radiation therapy for head and neck cancer, acupuncture has shown for the first time to reduce the debilitating side effect of xerostomia, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center.

The study, published in the journal Cancer, reported findings from the first randomized controlled trial of acupuncture for the prevention of xerostomia.

Xerostomia, or severe dry mouth, is characterized by reduced salivary flow, which commonly affects patients receiving radiotherapy for head and neck cancer. Most current treatments are palliative and offer limited benefit, according to Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., professor in MD Anderson's Departments of General Oncology and Behavioral Science and director of the Integrative Medicine Program.

The condition impairs quality of life for patients, as it creates difficulties eating, speaking and sleeping, while also increasing the risk for oral infections.

"There have been a number of small studies examining the benefits of acupuncture after xerostomia develops, but no one previously examined if it could prevent xerostomia," said Cohen, who is also the study's principal investigator. "We found incorporating acupuncture alongside radiotherapy diminished the incidence and severity of this side effect."

Cohen and his colleagues examined 86 patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma, treated at Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center. Forty patients were randomized to acupuncture and 46 to the standard of care. Those in the treatment arm received acupuncture therapy three times per week during the seven-week course of radiotherapy. Patients were evaluated before radiotherapy, weekly during radiotherapy, and then again one and six months later.

The results were based on data derived from two self-report questionnaires and measuring actual saliva flow. Patients completed the Xerostomia Questionnaire (XQ), an eight-item survey which assessed symptoms consistent with the condition. XQ scores under 30 corresponded to mild or no symptoms of xerostomia.

The second measure, MD Anderson Symptom Inventory Head and Neck (MDASI-HN), ranked the severity of cancer-related symptoms, other than xerostomia, and their interference with quality of life. The team also measured saliva flow rates using standardized sialometry collection techniques.

Benefits Noticed Quickly

"What was quite remarkable was that we started to see group differences as early as three weeks into radiotherapy for the development of xerostomia, cancer-related symptoms that interfere with quality of life, and saliva flow rates -- an important objective measure," said Zhiqiang Meng, M.D., Ph.D., co-principle investigator of the study and deputy chair of the Department of Integrative Oncology, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center.

The largest group differences in XQ scores were seen by the end of radiotherapy, but the differences persisted over time. By one month after the end of radiotherapy, 54.3 percent of the acupuncture group reported XQ scores greater than 30, compared to the control group at 86.1 percent. By six months after radiotherapy, the numbers dropped to 24.1 percent in the acupuncture group and 63.6 percent of the control group still reporting symptoms of xerostomia. Saliva flow rates were also greater in the acupuncture group, starting at three weeks into radiotherapy and persisting through the one and six month follow-up.

Acupuncture also helped cancer-related symptoms, other than xerostomia, as measured by the MDASI-HN questionnaire, with differences that emerged in week three and continued through six months.

"The medical implications are quite profound in terms of quality of life, because while chronic dry mouth may sound benign, it has a significant impact on sleeping, eating and speaking," Cohen said. "Without saliva, there can be an increase in microbial growth, possible bone infection and irreversible nutritional deficits."

Additional studies are needed to determine the mechanisms for the benefits of acupuncture, and while the study didn't examine this issue, Cohen said it may have an impact on local blood flux, specifically at the parotid gland.

Further research is planned, including a large trial conducted at MD Anderson in collaboration with Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center. Both centers will enroll 150 patients undergoing radiotherapy for head and neck cancer: 50 will receive acupuncture, 50 sham acupuncture and 50 will be enrolled in a control group. Researchers will also examine saliva constituents and a number of other measures to better determine the mechanisms of acupuncture.

In addition to Cohen, other authors on the study include, from MD Anderson: M. Kay Garcia, Dr. P.H., Integrative Medicine Program; Joseph Chiang, M.D., Department of Anesthesiology; Mark Chambers, D.M.D, Department of Dental Oncology; David Rosenthal, M.D., Department of Radiation Oncology; J. Lynn Palmer, Ph.D., Department of Biostatistics; Amy Spelman, Ph.D., and Qi Wei, M.S., both in the Integrative Medicine Program. From Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Hospital: Huiting Peng, M.D., Ying Zhang, Luming Liu, M.D., Ph.D., all in Department of Integrative Oncology, Chaosu Hu, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Radiation Oncology. From Fudan University College of Public Health: Qi Zhao, Ph.D. and Genming Zhao, Ph.D., both in Department of Statistics.

Support for the study was provided, in part, through grants from the National Cancer Institute and the Chinese Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Zhiqiang Meng, M. Kay Garcia, Chaosu Hu, Joseph Chiang, Mark Chambers, David I. Rosenthal, Huiting Peng, Ying Zhang, Qi Zhao, Genming Zhao, Luming Liu, Amy Spelman, J. Lynn Palmer, Qi Wei, Lorenzo Cohen. Randomized controlled trial of acupuncture for prevention of radiation-induced xerostomia among patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Cancer, 2011; DOI: 10.1002/cncr.26550

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111110130108.htm

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Oil prices drop as European debt worries mount (AP)

Oil prices were lower on Wednesday following a broad sell-off on Wall Street that was stoked by fears that Europe would be overwhelmed by a mountain of debt.

Here's how energy contracts traded:

On the New York Mercantile Exchange:

Crude fell $1.06 to end the day at $95.74 per barrel.

Gasoline lost 6.22 cents to finish at $2.6442 per gallon.

Heating oil fell 1.75 cents to end at $3.0986 per gallon.

Natural gas fell 9.3 cents to finish at $3.652 per 1,000 cubic feet.

On the ICE Futures exchange in London:

Brent crude lost $2.69 to end the day at $112.31 per barrel.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111109/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_prices_glance

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Arab Christians, minorities, reshaping US enclaves (AP)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. ? Jordanian immigrants take Communion at an Arabic-language Mass in Albuquerque. Lebanese-Americans help raise nearly $2 million for major improvements to a West Virginia church. Iraqi refugees who practice an ancient religion that views John the Baptist as their teacher hold baptisms in a Massachusetts pond popular for rowing regattas.

As war, the economy and persecution by Muslim extremists push Arab Christians and religious minorities out of the Middle East, the refugees and immigrants are quietly settling in small pockets across the U.S. They are reviving old, dormant churches, bringing together families torn apart by war and praying collectively in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. Religious experts say their growing presence in the U.S. is all about survival as Christians and religious minorities continue to get pushed out of the Holy Land.

And religious leaders said if violence continues, more can be expected to seek safety in the U.S. while disappearing in lands where they're lived for 2,000 years.

"For every plus in the U.S., there's a minus back there," said the Rev. Bakhos Chidiac, pastor of St. Rafka Maronite Church of Lakewood, Colo. "It's very sad."

According the U.S. State Department's 2011 reports on International Religious Freedom, for example, Iraq had an estimated Christian population of around 1.4 million before the U.S.-led invasion. The report says only around 400,000 to 600,000 remain and face increasing violence.

No one knows exactly how many Christians and religious minorities have fled persecution or come willingly for economic reasons into the U.S. But from Michigan to Louisiana, observers have noticed an increase in services like those from Maronite Catholics ? an Eastern Rite branch of Catholicism with roots in Lebanon and Syria. Maronites are part of the Catholic church, are recognized by the Pope and hold the same core beliefs as Roman Catholics. Mass is often held in Arabic and Aramaic.

Residents in Worcester, Mass., also have looked with curiosity as hundreds of recently resettled Iraqi refugees, who practice the pre-Christian Mandaean religion, hold early morning baptisms in Lake Quisigamond. Mandaeans have seen their population decrease in Iraq from 70,000 in the 1990s to just 3,000 today. In addition, more than 1,000 Iranian Mandaeans have fled to the U.S. after Iran passed laws prohibiting Mandaeans in civil life.

"When I left my village in Jordan in 1969, there were about 15,000 Christians there," said Sharif Rabadi, 60, an Albuquerque developer and businessman. "I think now there are less than 3,000 of us left."

Joseph Amar, director of programs in Arabic and Syriac at the University of Notre Dame, said that while the exodus is bad for Christianity in the Middle East, the move to the U.S. and other parts of the world is allowing followers to continue practicing their religion without fear of death or forced conversions. "Many come to cities with no familiar church and will just attend Roman Catholic services," Amar said.

But as the populations from Arab countries grow in U.S. cities and towns, Amar said the immigrants and refugees tend to come together to organize separate services at churches that allow them to use their facilities.

That's what happened recently at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Byzantine Catholic Church in Albuquerque, N.M. For more than a year, the Ruthenian Catholic Church has allowed immigrants from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Iraq to use its facilities once a month for Maronite services. The Rev. Chidiac is flown in from Colorado to give English services in line according to the Maronite rite.

This week, however, Rev. Chidiac performed Maronite Catholic services in Arabic to about 60 Albuquerque attendees. Officials with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe believe the Catholic Mass in Arabic was a first for New Mexico ? a state with the longest continuous Catholic presence in the present-day United States

During the service, attendees clutched Arabic Bibles, responded to prayers in Arabic and sang hymns some say they hadn't heard in 20 years.

George Saade, a member of the church who just moved in Albuquerque from Alabama, helped organize the Arabic Mass via Facebook and through other Catholic church bulletins. "It's been 15 years since I've attended a Mass in Arabic," said Saade, 39, who is originally from Lebanon. "I've been waiting for this for a long time."

Reham Haddad, 40, wanted her two youngest children to attend so they could experience a Mass as she did more than 18 years ago. "They understand Arabic but it's different when you pray," she said. "I think they liked it."

Chidiac said he was pleased with the turnout and thinks Arabic services could grow if the Albuquerque population wanted it. "This is how it starts ... in a small church room," he said. "Then, maybe later, they can get their own church."

___

Follow Russell Contreras on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111110/ap_on_re_us/us_arab_christians

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Employer-Based Health Insurance Continues to Trend Down ? Full ...

Home > business and economics, Gallup, health insurance, labor > Employer-Based Health Insurance Continues to Trend?Down

Employer-Based Health Insurance Continues to Trend Down
Source: Gallup

The percentage of American adults who get their health insurance from an employer continues to decline, falling to 44.5% in the third quarter of this year. This percentage has been steadily declining since Gallup and Healthways started tracking Americans? health insurance sources in 2008.

health insurance in the U.S.

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Source: http://fulltextreports.com/2011/11/11/employer-based-health-insurance-continues-to-trend-down/

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Universal, Sony/ATV to buy EMI for $4.1 billion (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? EMI Group Ltd., the iconic British music company that is home to The Beatles, Coldplay and Katy Perry, is being split and sold for $4.1 billion.

The deals will open EMI's buyers, Universal Music and Sony/ATV, to regulatory scrutiny as they increase their dominance of the music industry.

Universal Music Group said Friday that it will pay 1.2 billion pounds ($1.9 billion) for the recording division, joining Universal artists including Lady Gaga and Eminem with EMI superstars such as David Guetta and Lady Antebellum.

A consortium led by Sony/ATV announced a separate deal Friday to pay $2.2 billion for EMI's publishing division. That business is in charge of songwriting copyrights for such artists as Rihanna and Norah Jones.

Sony/ATV, a joint venture between Sony Corp. and the Michael Jackson estate, is a 38 percent partner in the consortium, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly and request anonymity. Other parties include Mubadala Development Co., Jynwel Capital Ltd., the Blackstone Group and David Geffen.

The two-part sale, if approved by regulators, would further increase Universal Music's dominance in recorded music and springboard Sony/ATV into the top spot as a music publisher, according to Impala, an association of European independent music companies that is against the deal.

The purchases would give Universal Music and Sony/ATV undue negotiating power over artists and distributors of music, even over the world's biggest music store, Apple Inc.'s iTunes, Impala said.

Both deals are expected to be carefully reviewed in Europe, the U.S., Japan and Australia. Even if regulators approve, they could force the sale of key assets or attach other terms.

Helen Smith, Impala's executive chairwoman, noted that when Universal Music bought music publisher BMG in 2007, it had to sell some assets to get smaller.

"When you have players which are dominant, even if they take over small players in market share, that can have a serious impact on competition," she said.

Jean-Bernard Levy, CEO of Universal Music parent company Vivendi SA, told analysts on a conference call that he was "very confident" the deal would be approved in as little as 10 months.

In the United States, Universal is the top music producer with a 30 percent market share compared with EMI's 9 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan. With a combined share of 39 percent, they would tower over Sony at 29 percent and Warner Music at 19 percent.

On the publishing side, Sony/ATV will add EMI's 1.3 million song copyrights to its roster of 750,000 songs that include hits from The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Taylor Swift.

The deal leaves Citigroup, EMI's current owner, with liability for its underfunded pension plan, according to two other people familiar with the talks. One put the liability at $600 million, the other said it was about $260 million.

Neither person was authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Citigroup had put EMI up for sale in June, four months after it foreclosed on private equity firm Terra Firma. Terra Firma bought EMI in 2007 in a $6.8 billion acquisition financed with debt from Citigroup, but it couldn't make enough money to keep up with the terms.

Vivendi believes it is swooping in to buy a troubled asset at an "inflection point" in the music industry, Levy said. Thanks to gains in digital track and album sales, overall U.S. album sales are up 5.2 percent at 360 million units so far this year, according to SoundScan. At this point last year, overall album sales had plunged 10 percent.

Vivendi expects to cut costs and save more than $150 million a year ? making the deal profitable even if the music industry doesn't grow in the future. Vivendi expects the deal to boost its profits in the first year after regulatory approval.

Morningstar analyst Allan Nichols, who covers Vivendi, viewed the deal with trepidation on fears that the music industry could resume its decline and that regulators could reject it.

But antitrust regulators could be more lenient of big tie-ups when the music industry is struggling to recover from more than a decade of online piracy, he said.

Also, Vivendi is paying less per dollar of earnings than Access Industries' Len Blavatnik did when he took Warner Music Group Corp. private for $1.24 billion in July.

"The catalog is very impressive, and they didn't pay a whole lot," Nichols said.

Sony/ATV's interest in expanding its library is due to the stability of licensing music copyrights, a business that has been profitable over the years because it relies on business customers like filmmakers instead of individual consumers.

In a move that may appease regulators in Europe and the U.S., Vivendi said it would sell 500 million euros ($680 million) worth of non-core assets, mostly minority stakes in companies that it did not disclose. Strategic bidders that lost out on the auction, such as Warner Music, are expected to vie for those assets.

Vivendi said that London-based EMI would find a safe home at a company headquartered not far away in Paris.

"For me, as an Englishman, EMI was the pre-eminent music company that I grew up with," Universal CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement. "UMG is committed to both preserving EMI's cultural heritage and artistic diversity and also investing in its artists and people to grow the company's assets for the future."

Grainge said on the conference call that he would ensure the famous Beatles' recording studio, Abbey Road Studios, would remain open as a "symbol of British culture."

Universal released statements from bands in support, including from Coldplay manager Dave Holmes, who said "this can only be a positive for the artists and executives at EMI."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111111/ap_en_mu/us_emi_group_sale

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Wells Fargo forms new group to finance REITs ? HousingWire

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011, 2:41 pm

Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC: 24.93 -6.03%) announced the creation of the Wells Fargo REIT Finance Group Wednesday.

The new business segment will offer banking services, lines of credit, term loans and construction loans to real estate investment trusts.

The group will provide services to publicly-traded real estate investment trusts that specialize in commercial real estate, the bank confirmed Wednesday.

Wells Fargo formed the new REIT finance segment by pulling together professionals from several Wells Fargo business segments to ensure the finance team has the expertise to serve the bank's REIT clients.

Wells Fargo specifically named Rex Rudy, formerly managing director of real estate syndicated finance at Wells Fargo Securities, as managing director and head of the new REIT Finance Group.

The new division will operate out of offices located in Charlotte, Chicago and Los Angeles. Matt Ricketts, managing director, will lead the segment's Eastern region, while Scott Solis was named managing director of the central region.

Derek Evans will serve as managing director for the Western region.

The bank's move comes at a time when REITs are experiencing some success in the market. The majority of real estate investment trusts bested third-quarter earnings projections this past month, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a recent report.

Still, KBW says REITs remain cautious when projecting earnings for the 2012 fiscal year because of lingering concerns over the global economy.

Write to Kerri Panchuk.

Source: http://www.housingwire.com/2011/11/09/wells-fargo-forms-new-group-to-finance-reits?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wells-fargo-forms-new-group-to-finance-reits

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