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WASHINGTON (AP) — Ford's Theatre will reopen its doors and resume performances Wednesday, using private funding, even though the government shutdown has continued into a third week.

Theater officials announced Tuesday that the national historic site and performance space will reopen Wednesday. Theater trustee Ronald O. Perelman, the chairman and CEO of MacAndrews and Forbes Holdings Inc., donated $25,000 in emergency funding to pay for the theater's operations for the next eight days.

Ford's Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, is a National Park Service site. A private group runs the theater's programming.

On Wednesday, the theater will resume performances of "The Laramie Project," which is part of the theater's Lincoln Legacy Project focusing on diversity and equality. The production marks 15 years since Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was abducted and killed in Laramie, Wyo. Remaining tickets are $25 each.

The Ford's Theatre Society has been losing about $100,000 in revenue per week since the theater went dark at the start of the highly anticipated "Laramie Project" production due to the government shutdown, said spokeswoman Lauren Beyea. The show will run through Oct. 27, but will not be extended because the actors have other commitments.

An agreement was made to reopen Ford's Theatre after several states agreed to provide funding to reopen national parks in other areas. The National Park Service agreed to a similar arrangement for the theater.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fords-theatre-dc-reopen-private-funds-210722833.html
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Courtesy Taylor Hargis

Joshua Hargis, who was seriously wounded, salutes as he is awarded the Purple Heart.

By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News

A salute by an Army Ranger — hospitalized with serious wounds after a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan — is warming the hearts of many people after being posted online.

Cpl. Josh Hargis’ commander was at a military hospital awarding the seemingly unconscious soldier a Purple Heart for his injuries, pinning the medal to the blanket covering him.

And that's when Hargis surprisingly raised his arm to salute — struggling with his doctors and medical tubes to do so.

The commander sent a picture along with a letter about the incident to Hargis’ wife, Taylor, writing that "grown men began to weep" at the sight of the salute.

The commander added that it was “the single greatest event I have witnessed in my ten years in the Army.”

Hargis was wounded Oct. 6 when an Afghan woman detonated a suicide bomb vest, killing four members of his 3rd Army Ranger Battalion and wounding 12 other American soldiers, according to a report on the website of the soldier's hometown newspaper in Ohio, the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Taylor Hargis posted the picture along with the note on Facebook Oct. 12, where it has been shared more than 4,000 times. The story and picture were also distributed on the Guardian of Valor website, which called the picture the "the salute seen around the world."

The letter from the commander, according to Taylor Hargis' Facebook post, read in part:

"Josh, whom everybody in the room (over 50 people) assumed to be unconscious, began to move his right arm under the blanket in a diligent effort to salute the Commander as is customary during these ceremonies. Despite his wounds, wrappings, tubes, and pain, Josh fought the doctor who was trying to restrain his right arm and rendered the most beautiful salute any person in that room had ever seen. I cannot impart on you the level of emotion that poured through the intensive care unit that day.

"Grown men began to weep and we were speechless at a gesture that speak volumes about Josh's courage and character. The picture, which we believe belongs on every news channel and every newspaper, is attached. I have it hanging above my desk now and will remember it as the single greatest event I have witnessed in my ten years in the Army."

Hargis, 24, is a 2007 graduate of of Dater High School on the city’s west side and attended the University of Cincinnati, NBC affiliate WLWT in Cincinnati reported. He has since been moved from Afghanistan to Germany and onto San Antonio, Texas, the station said.

A reporter for another local station, WCPO, spoke to Hargis’ mother Laura Heitman, who said that Taylor and Josh Hargis are expecting their first child. Heitman also said she had recently talked to her son.

Her son, she said, “sounded amazing when I talked to him. He was in good spirits.”

Terri Wessel, who said she had taught Hargis in high school, told WCPO that the picture brought tears to her eyes.

“Seeing the picture of him saluting was the first I knew of him being injured,” Wessel told the station.”I teared up when I saw the picture but smiled at the same time as that picture summed up the type of man that Josh is. True American hero in my mind.”

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663306/s/32816df0/sc/8/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C10A0C150C20A980A6470Egrown0Emen0Ebegan0Eto0Eweep0Ewounded0Esoldier0Eawakens0Ein0Ehospital0Eto0Emake0Esalute0Eseen0Earound0Ethe0Eworld0Dlite/story01.htm
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Twitter’s offices in San Francisco. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

Nielsen recently released its first Twitter TV Ratings top 10 list, a new metric that measures not how many people watch a given television show — the basis for traditional TV ratings — but how rather how much activity they generate on Twitter. Just how different are the two metrics? Take look at the Breaking Bad finale: While it came in No. 1 on the list as the most tweeted about show in America, its traditional TV ratings didn’t even crack the top 10.

Nor did many of the most-watched shows make the same sort of splash on Twitter. The most-watched shows during the the week Breaking Bad topped the Twitter Ratings chart were Sunday Night Football, The Big Bang Theory, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, The Crazy Ones, two other NFL programs and The Voice. How many of them showed up on the Twitter TV top 10? Only The Voice.

It turns out the shows most seen on Twitter aren’t always the shows most seen on TV, and the discrepancy illustrates just how much more there is to learn about what a tweet about a TV show means. It also offers networks and advertisers a way to gauge the relationship between viewership and Twitter traffic, but knowing the volume of tweets is just the beginning, and there’s a lot of data in those tweets that’s still silent.

For example, were people tweeting so much about Breaking Bad simply because it was the finale? Do shows like Glee and Jimmy Kimmel Live do well because they have younger audiences that are more tuned-in to Twitter? Are people tweeting that they love The Voice or that they’re angry at who’s winning? That information is out there, but it doesn’t come out in numbers on the reach of a given tweet (Nielsen tracks the number of tweets, people tweeting about a show, and also how many people see those tweets)

“Social provides a lot of opportunity, but it’s difficult to relate what’s being said online – especially on Twitter – to what’s being done in the real world. People say one thing and they do another,” Brian Blau, a Gartner analyst who researches social analytics tools, told WIRED. “How do you help these businesses figure out what the differences are?”

In other words, we may know that a lot of people are tweeting about a show, but are they watching it? And, if so, are they enjoying it? Who these tweeters are and how they feel about, say, an episode of Scandal isn’t something you can determine from knowing that there are nearly 713,000 tweets about it.

One thing that has potential to change this, Blau noted, is Twitter’s new deal with Comcast, which was announced last Wednesday. The two companies are pairing up on a new feature called “See It,” which will essentially turn Twitter into a remote control. Launching in November, “See It” will create a Twitter card for any show mentioned in a tweet that will allow users to click to watch, On Demand stream, or DVR the show mentioned. That feature, Blau said, will give much more effective data on how often a tweet leads to someone tuning in. And that seems to be what Comcast, which has 24 million U.S. subscribers, is looking for. As the company’s chief business development officer Sam Schwartz told All Things D, “we want to make the conversation on Twitter lead to consumption.”

Nielsen has determined there is a two-way relationship between Twitter and ratings, even if no one is quite sure exactly how it works. Back in August, the media measurement company released a study that looked at 221 primetime episodes and found that the live ratings for a given episode had a “statistically significant” impact on tweets related to the show for nearly half of the episodes sampled and – conversely – the volume of tweets caused a significant change to the live ratings of 29 percent of the episodes. Translation: For nearly a third of the episodes sampled, the more tweets, the higher the ratings. Interesting, but even Nielsen is still a little unsure what it means.

“This round of causation research was only looking to see if there’s a ‘there there’ with respect to tweets influencing ratings,” a Nielsen rep told Variety when the report was released. “Now that we’ve seen statistically significant evidence of this, the next wave of research will be around understanding how/why.”

Granted, most of this information is generated in order to give networks and advertisers a better idea of the kind of traction TV shows are getting on social networks, but the metrics are likely going to be interesting to fans as well as ad buyers. Think about it. Joss Whedon’s cult favorite space cowboy show Firefly never got great Nielsen numbers, but if there had been Twitter TV Ratings back when it was on the air, fans could’ve pointed to the show’s presumably significant level of social engagement as a sign of its niche popularity.

So what’s next in terms of looking at engagement beyond the numbers? Nielsen’s SocialGuide, which the company acquired last year to work on its social TV measurements, is working to broaden its Twitter metrics to include demographic data like age and gender in 2014, according to a Nielsen spokesperson. There’s also a plan to include tweets in Spanish.

What Nielsen probably won’t track, simply because it doesn’t lend itself to straight-forward numbers, is the idea of sentiment — how people actually feel about the things they are discussing. Is someone tweeting about the Breaking Bad finale because they loved it or hated it? There no distinction in the current Twitter TV Ratings. And while several analytics firms – including Bluefin Labs, which Twitter acquired earlier this year – do monitor sentiment, it’s a notoriously difficult thing to measure. There’s no foolproof way for text-analyzing machines to understand sarcasm and slang, for example.

“The vendors that are experts at this claim 90 percent of the conversation that they measure, they have an accurate measure of sentiment or an accurate measure of the subject of the conversation,” Blau said. “Skeptics tell me that that’s very high – 90 percent is at the upper bound – but the realistic numbers are much lower, in the 50 to 70 percent [range]. Will it ever be 100 percent? The answer is no.”

Of course, the bigger question is: Does it matter? Some say “any press is good press,” and perhaps all tweets are good tweets. Even if everyone’s talking about how terrible or WTF a show is, if the volume is high enough it might cause people to tune in just to see what all the fuss is about. It’ll be especially interesting to see how this plays out in the new arrangement between Twitter and Comcast. Based on the screenshot examples released by the cable provider, it appears the Twitter cards will at least initially be attached to tweets from the official show Twitter feeds, but if/when the cards are attached to random users tweets, you might see an update that reads “Tonight’s #GreysAnatomy was the worst ever!” followed by a card asking if you’d like to watch it now.

In a blog post announcing the gambit, Comcast Cable’s head of business development Sam Schwartz used the example of seeing friends tweeting about Sharknado, which got a lot of tweets even if many of them were mocking (or at least ironic). “If I had only seen an ad about a sharks-meet-a-natural-disaster movie, frankly, there would be little chance that I would tune in,” Schwartz said. “However, all these tweets pique my curiosity, I click on the See It button in one of the tweets, and then use it to set a reminder to watch the movie later that night.” So maybe love it or hate it or love-hate it — it really doesn’t matter just so long as there are eyeballs.

Metrics like age, gender and sentiment are still only the beginning. There’s still a lot of other data — and combination of data — embedded in the world of Twitter for networks and advertisers to mine, even if analyzing it may prove the bigger challenge. “It’s complicated,” said Clark Fredricksen, vice president of research firm eMarketer told WIRED. “On the one hand, you have the internet, which is the most accountable, measurable media channel in history, compared to TV, which is arguably the most difficult channel to measure.” In other words, social media provides an embarrassment of riches that viewership numbers don’t. We just need to figure out how to read it.

“It’s probably fair to say we’re past version 1.0 of social analytics tools. Version 1.0 is giving people basic high-level statistics – counts, followers, and maybe the first order of statistics saying what does some of this data mean?” Blau added. “[Now] we’re into version 2.0 of social analytics, where they’ve realized how to get access to the data, they’ve had their first level, they’ve realized what their customers want now in terms of information and all those smart data scientists in the world are hopefully coming up with algorithms to give them that.”

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President Barack Obama speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. Lawmakers Wednesday voted to avoid a financial default and reopen the government after a 16-day partial shutdown. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

From left, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., wind up outlining their approach to tackling the nation’s debt problems in the Senate Reception Room at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. With last-minute legislation passed in Congress that reopened the government and averted a national default, bipartisan budget conferees from both houses of Congress emerge from an initial meeting in the Capitol. (AP Photo/ Scott Applewhite)

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, walks to the chamber for the vote on a Senate-passed bill that would avert a threatened Treasury default and reopen the government after a partial, 16-day shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. The end to the rancorous standoff between the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House was hastened by the imminent deadline to extend the debt ceiling to avoid a national default. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

In this image from House Television, with partial voting totals on the screen, a woman, at the rostrum just below the House presiding officer, seen between the "yea" and "nay" wording, is removed from the House chamber after she began shouting during the vote for the bill to end the partial 16-day government shutdown and to fund the government. The woman was described by lawmakers and aides as a long-time House stenographer. (AP Photo/House TV)

LONDON (AP) — The world's disbelief at the political impasse in the U.S. turned to relief Thursday as the country stepped back from the brink of default. But experts and foreign officials warned that Washington's credibility had been damaged — a point President Barack Obama echoed.

The deal may assure only a few months of financial order, and the prospect of another possible crisis early next year when the agreement lapses leaves many wondering about the stability of U.S. global leadership.

Nicholas Kitchen, a political scientist at the London School of Economics, said the shutdown had tarnished the reputation of the U.S.

"In showing itself to be unable to even run its own affairs competently the U.S. in some sense surrenders claims to global leadership," he said. "It's difficult to tell other people how to run their affairs when you can't keep your own house in order."

He said that when countries look successful, other countries look to follow their lead.

"The U.S. is not doing a very good job at the moment in showing itself to be a model of good governance," he said.

Still, he said the crisis isn't likely to have a long-term impact on U.S. influence, despite the embarrassment of Obama having to cancel a long-planned trip to Asia to deal with the impasse at home.

British Labour Party legislator Ann Clwyd said she and other members of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee were watching closely because of a planned official trip to Washington in two weeks' time — they wouldn't be traveling if the government remained shuttered.

She said her time in the European Parliament, where budget shutdowns have happened more than once, convinced her that a last-minute settlement was likely. But she feared that Obama's health care plan might be gutted as part of a deal with the Republicans.

"The fact that that didn't happen is very positive," she said. "I very much hoped that would survive."

Clwyd said the credibility of the U.S. was only slightly damaged by the prolonged shutdown, since it was resolved in time to avert financial disaster. But she said the U.S. has in recent months been failing to provide leadership on difficult Middle East issues, including Syria and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

There was also relief in Brussels at the heart of the European Union as the U.S. stepped back from the brink.

Simon O'Connor, spokesman for the EU's economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn, said a "serious large shadow" that threatened both the global economy and the nascent recovery in Europe has been lifted with the resolution of the debt ceiling crisis.

"That's very good news which we strongly welcome," he said.

Many in Europe enjoyed poking fun at the apparently broken U.S. political system, but the pleasure of laughing at America's troubles seemed to fade as default neared.

The Tea Party movement got short shrift in many quarters, with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Munich, Germany suggesting that Obama was lucky to have such feeble adversaries.

"It is easy to remain the reasonable, serene statesman if you are dealing with concrete-headed , self-righteous nihilists like the Tea Party lawmakers," the influential newspaper said in a commentary. "It is easy to reject all negotiations if the other side acts like a crazy extortionist gang. Obama played the PR -game of guilt and innocence very cleverly. According to the polls, he wins hands down. But that is not the primary task of the president."

The newspaper said Obama had not handled his responsibility as president well despite his apparent victory over the Tea Party.

Xenia Dormandy, director of the Americas program at London's Chatham House, said the U.S. image had suffered a double blow, with both its economic and political credentials called into question

"There is a sense that the U.S. as a reliable ally is not necessarily the case anymore," she said, warning that both American allies and adversaries have reached this conclusion. But she, like others, said the damage is most likely short term.

Politics aside, there were individual signs of relief in many parts of the globe. In the South Korean capital, Seoul, 26-year-old college senior Lee Boo-gun said he thought the U.S. economy had been about to collapse — an event he believed would shortly be felt at his door.

"I thought it would affect Korea's economy," he said. "The U.S. would hit Europe and then it would affect Asia."

He expressed relief that reason had prevailed.

In Israel, a key American ally in the Middle East, commentators said the fight hurt America's overall image even though a deal had been reached before it was too late.

"There is no doubt that damage was done here to the image of American economic stability," Israel's economic envoy to Washington, Eli Groner, told Israel's Army Radio. "It's not good for the financial markets, not in the United States and not around the world."

In Brazil, a large holder of U.S. debt, there was certainly relief, but also concerns that it's just a temporary fix and more turbulence is ahead. Finance Minister Guido Mantega said the U.S. must come to a lasting answer to the "temporary solution" that was found. He added that as long as the threat of another shutdown exists, there will be "a sensation of insecurity, distrust and therefore damage to business in general."

Brazil's biggest newspapers carried headlines like O Globo's "Temporary Relief" and leading economic columnist Miriam Leitao summed up the mood in the daily.

"Nobody won. Everybody lost. The Obama government was held prisoner by blackmail. The Republican party allowed itself to be controlled by a radical minority and no longer represents the average American's way of thinking," Leitao wrote. "The government as a whole lost credibility and today there is more uncertainty surrounding the world economy."

___

AP Business Writers Joe McDonald in Beijing, Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong, Youkyung Lee in Seoul and Kay Johnson in Mumbai and AP Writers Robert Reid in Berlin, Peter Enav in Taipei, Tim Sullivan in New Delhi, Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem, Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo and Cassandra Vinograd and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-17-Budget%20Battle-World/id-97e8040d776d41f6b5bbbbcc54a3bd51
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October 15, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC

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>> SHARE YOUR CONTACTS: NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally, by Barton Gellman, Ashkan Soltani: "…harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans.... The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and 'buddy lists' from instant messaging services as they move across global data links.... During a single day last year, the NSA's Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year." WaPo
>>>> NSA collects email contact lists, IM buddy lists from overseas with no oversight. At all. TechDirt
>>>> Yahoo promises encryption as NSA's email and IM contact list collection is exposed GigaOM
>>>> Gov't moves to keep NSA surveillance lawsuit away from Supreme Court Ars Technica
>>>> Who should judge whether Snowden's leaked secrets are too sensitive to report? The Guardian

>> IDENTITY WARS: Salesforce Identity rocks the boat for startups like Okta and Ping, by Nancy Gohring: "There's a shakeup looming in the fledgling cloud identity and access management market. Salesforce today is making its identity and access management service, known as Identity, generally available. Microsoft began offering its Azure Active Directory service earlier this year but expects to add more substantial capabilities by the end of the year. Other big names are sure to follow, making life hard for the startups like Okta, OneLogin, and Ping Identity, that trailblazed this segment. Andras Cser, an analyst at Forrester, called the emergence of cloud identity and access services from the likes of Microsoft and Salesforce a 'huge threat' to the startups." CITEWorld
>>>> Salesforce vs. Microsoft: Dueling single sign-ons InfoWorld

>> UPGRADE? HELL NO: Enterprises will snub Microsoft's faster release tempo by sticking with Windows 7, by Gregg Keizer: "Enterprises will standardize on Windows 7 and Office 2010 and will ignore Microsoft's newer operating system and suite for years, research firm Gartner predicted.... Ballmer doesn't get it... Businesses don't want to deal with annual Windows updates." Computerworld

>> IT'S NOT ABOUT TIME: Google Watch is happening soon, heavy into Kit Kat/Google Now functionality, by Seth Weintraub: "Google could put a lot of the functionality of Google Glass in the watch product. Push a button, ask a question, get a response as the watch talks to the Now-enabled smartphone. Also, the 'serendipitous' information that Google Now shows you on your phone could come up in the watch. Time to get home, Calendar alarms, emails, SMSes, etc. all could get pushed to the watch's display." 9to5Google
>>>> Google Glass: Yes, it's that bad InfoWorld

>> WE'RE ALL NIELSONS NOW: Google readying 'Mobile Meter' app that offers rewards for tracking mobile usage, by Matt Brian: "... new mobile apps that compensate users if they allow their mobile behavior to be monitored. We're told that the project, known internally as 'Mobile Meter,' utilizes iOS and Android apps that intelligently monitor app usage and web browsing habits and send the data back to Google." Engadget

>> BEZOS ERUPTIONS: Bezos in action: 10 zesty slices from Brad Stone's new book, by George Anders: "Here are 10 specific insights into Bezos's business revolution from The Everything Store. All of them made me sit up and blink, even though I've written about Amazon, intermittently, since 1998." Forbes

>> STAT DU JOUR: Device and app trends in South Korea, the first saturated device market, by Mary Ellen Gordon: "Worldwide the installed base of connected devices measured by Flurry grew by 81% between August of 2012 and August of 2013, whereas growth for South Korea during the same time period was only 17%... in a worldwide sample of 97,963 iOS and Android devices, only 7% were phablets, but for South Korea that percentage was 41%. The appeal of phablets in South Korea appears to suppress the tablet market there. Worldwide, 19% of the devices in our sample were tablets compared to only 5% in South Korea." The Flurry Blog
>>>> Flurry to provide analytics to 37K South Korean developers in deal with SK Planet VentureBeat

>> POP-UP SITE: Lavabit to briefly reinstate services for data recovery: "Beginning today, Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit LLC, will begin the process that will allow former users of Lavabit to briefly access their account and recover data lost from the initial shutdown. To begin this process, the user will first be allowed to change their password during a 72 hour period, beginning tonight at 7:00 PM Central.... If users are indeed concerned that their account information has been compromised, this will allow them to change their account password on a website with a newly secured SSL key. Following the 72 hour period, Thursday, October 17th, the website will then allow users to access email archives and their personal account data so that it may be preserved by the user." PR Newswire
>>>> Let's rally for Lavabit to fight for the privacy rights of the American people Rally.org

>> NEEDS TREATMENT: Confessions of a Windows Phone User, by Ashlee Vance: "Hello. My name is Ashlee Vance, and I have a Windows phone.... To own a Windows smartphone in Silicon Valley is to invite ridicule and pity. Every day I pull out the bright yellow Nokia (NOK) Lumia 920, and every day iPhone and Android types look at me with dismay. Why, they wonder, would I subject myself to an app wasteland? Why would anyone take the risk of a Blue Screen of Death interrupting their phone call? Why would anybody opt for the platonic ideal of unhip?" Bloomberg Businessweek

>> PICKS AND AXES: Bitcoin mining rush means real cash for hardware makers, by Olga Kharif: "The currency, used to buy and sell everything from electronics to illegal drugs on the Web, has surged to about $135, more than 10 times its value a year ago.... The rally has created a cottage industry of speculators eager to get their hands on Bitcoins, which can only be created digitally by using powerful computers to solve complex software problems. That has in turn boosted a market for high-powered machines, some costing more than $20,000 apiece, which are custom-made to unlock new Bitcoins in a process called mining, a nod to the excavation of minerals and metal ore." Bloomberg

>> MEA CULPA: A clarification and an apology, by Scott Wiess of A16Z: "The entrepreneur is usually in the middle of A/B testing to try to get one or more important end user statistics working such as downloads, daily active users (DAU), monthly active users (MAU), and a compelling cohort analysis of usage over time. This messy, but necessary, experimentation process where theories are rapidly tested and retested was the stage that I referred to as 'Fruit fly experiments.' Although it was not my intention, I see how this analogy could be offensive to entrepreneurs that are in the thick of this problem -- I don't mean to make light of their struggle. Having been in the thick of it myself multiple times, I have a deep appreciation for how hard and emotionally draining the product/market fit process is and apologize for the careless analogy." A16Z

>> FUNNY MONEY: Gaming juggernaut Supercell (Clash of Clans, Hay Day) sells a 51% stake for $ 1.53B to SoftBank and GungHo online TechCrunch

>> SkyGiraffe gets strategic investment from Microsoft to mobilize enterprises. "Terms were not disclosed but we understand from sources that the investment is more about strategy than injecting large amounts of cash. Because SkyGiraffe has key integrations with Microsoft technologies, this will give it significant distribution, and presumably, way more traction than if it was out there on its own." TechCrunch

>> VMware acquires Desktone, makes network virtualization generally available InfoWorld

>> Silicon Valley stays quiet as Washington implodes Computerworld

>> Trolls defeat Scientific American, Popular Science Ars Technica

>> Strengths and weaknesses of MS SmartScreen filter HelpNet Security

>> Zettaset claims Intel lied, cheated and stole its Hadoop software GigaOM

>> D-Link's backdoor: What else is in there? InfoWorld

>> Thousands of sites hacked via vBulletin hole Krebs on Security

>> Five tips to make your code better Vic Cherubini

>> Researchers achieve 100 Gbps over sub-terahertz wireless, set world record Engadget

>> Apple ups its fashion cred, names Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts as SVP of retail and online stores TechCrunch

>> TWEET O' THE DAY: "New Google search results in Chrome for Android are disgusting and confusing. Ease back on the ads dudes." @joshuatopolsky

FEED ME, SEYMOUR: Comments? Questions? Tips? Shoot mail to Trent or Woody. Follow @gegax or @woodyleonhard.

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Courtesy of IDW

David Ozer and Ted Adams

Comics publisher IDW is pushing into television.

IDW, which publishes more than 300 original properties, has launched IDW Entertainment in an effort to fund and develop new television properties based on its massive catalog. David Ozer will oversee the division as president.

Ozer will work with IDW publisher and CEO Ted Adams to identify, develop and oversee brand extensions across its portfolio of comics and graphic novels for the television market. The division will focus on financing, development and production of TV series with the goal of securing rare but increasingly proffered straight-to-series commitments from networks. He comes to IDW from executive roles at Sonar Entertainment, Starz Media/IDT Entertainment and DIC Entertainment.

STORY: IDW Announces New 'Transformers/G.I. Joe' Series

Circle of Confusion, the shingle that executive produces AMC's The Walking Dead and creator Robert Kirkman's upcoming TV adaptation of comic Outcast, will oversee packaging and creative development of the division and will executive produce the company's projects under Rick Jacobs.

Initial titles under consideration include Life Undead, from co-EP Chris Pollack with showrunner Paul Zbyszewski (Agents of SHIELD, Lost), who penned the comic book attached; Brooklyn Animal Control, based on the dark comic from writer-director J.T. Petty (Splinter Cell) and artists Stephen Thompson; and V Wars, which is edited by New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Maberry. For its part, IDW Entertainment is already in talks with a network to bring V Wars to the screen.

"IDW Publishing's significant growth over the past several years, particularly in the theatrical arena with a number of properties currently in development at major studios, together with the ever increasing popularity of our creator-owned titles, have provided us with the ideal opportunity to expand into multiplatform entertainment," Adams said. "David's depth of distribution and finance expertise in television, coupled with his production knowledge and his extensive relationships within the entertainment community, make him the perfect choice for spearheading our aggressive move into television."

Added Jacobs: "The timing couldn't be better for IDW Publishing to invest in television production. IDW is a powerhouse of creativity, and the film studios recognize that potential. By financing its own television projects, the company is now poised to become a major player across all media platforms. We're very excited to continue to help expand IDW's reach beyond publishing."

On the feature side, IDW has a number of projects in development, including Lore with Warner Bros. and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson; World War Robot at Disney with Jerry Bruckheimer attached; and Zombies vs. Robots at Sony.

CAA packaged the deal.

The news comes as comics-themed fare continues to be a hot property on the small screen. ABC's Marvel Comics-inspired Avengers follow-up Agents of SHIELD has already been picked up for a full season, and Fox has given a straight-to-series commitment to Gotham, a prequel centering on Batman's Commissioner Gordon. Fox is also prepping an adaptation of Alan Moore's Vertigo favorite The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

E-mail: Lesley.Goldberg@THR.com
Twitter: @Snoodit

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Mayim Bialik
Sues Over Car Accident
I Nearly Lost a Hand!

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"Big Bang Theory" actress Mayim Bialik has just sued over her serious car accident last year -- claiming it nearly cost her a hand.

As we reported, Bialik was driving in her white Volvo last August when it was struck by a 2013 Mustang in a Hollywood intersection. The other car was filled with Chilean tourists.

At the time, a source told us there was blood everywhere at the crash scene, stemming from major damage to Mayim's hand. Another source said "her finger was almost completely severed ... it was just hanging there."

Now the former "Blossom" star has filed a lawsuit against the other driver as well as Hertz Rent-a-Car -- presumably because the other car was a rental -- claiming she suffered injuries to her right hand, right thumb, and nerve damage.

She's suing for unspecified damages, but that includes lost wages -- and since she earns a reported 5 figures per episode on "Big Bang," it could really add up.

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Source: http://www.tmz.com/2013/10/18/mayim-bialik-lawsuit-car-accident-hand-injury/
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How 'phenotype switching' can make melanoma become metastatic and resistant to drugs

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Oct-2013

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Contact: Ben Leach
bleach@wistar.org
215-495-6800
The Wistar Institute

By understanding the Wnt5A signaling pathway, researchers may be able to determine which patients may respond more favorably to BRAF inhibitors

One of the challenges of understanding cancer is trying to determine the mechanisms that drive metastasis, or the process by which tumor cells are able to spread throughout the body. In order to investigate metastasis, researchers at The Wistar Institute focused on a process involving the phenotypes the outward, physical appearance based on genetic coding of tumor cells. According to the researchers, "phenotype switching" may be involved in changing appearance of melanoma tumors by altering the number and type of protein receptors that dot the surface of the individual melanoma cells within the tumor. Identifying the phenotype patients exhibit may help determine which patients are more likely to benefit from existing medications while also providing an opportunity to create new targeted therapies.

The findings were published in the journal Cancer Discovery and are currently available online.

"We were able to demonstrate for the first time that different receptors within a single signaling pathway in this case, the Wnt signaling pathway can guide the phenotypic plasticity of tumor cells, and increased signaling of Wnt5A in particular can result in an increase in highly invasive tumor cells that are less sensitive to existing treatments for metastatic melanoma," said Ashani Weeraratna, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Program of Wistar's NCI-designated Cancer Center, and senior corresponding author on the manuscript.

While melanoma accounts for less than 5 percent of all cases of skin cancer, it is the deadliest form of the disease, resulting in a large majority of all the deaths related to skin cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. The five-year survival rate for patients with metastatic melanoma is between 15 and 20 percent, and while new, targeted therapies designed to combat the disease based on a person's genetics have become available in recent years, some of these drugs are not particularly effective in many patients, and many who do respond well to the drugs often eventually become resistant to them. This makes understanding advanced stages of melanoma and what internal processes could be at work all the more important for developing new treatments.

Weeraratna and her team focus on Wnt5A, a Wnt signaling molecule that has been found in increased levels in metastatic melanomas. In order for Wnt5A to promote the phenotype switch from early in the tumor's formation to the time it becomes metastatic, the tyrosine kinase receptor ROR2 is required. When ROR2 is not present, Wnt5A is unable to promote tumor metastasis. The only other member of the family that has been identified is ROR1, and this research was done to determine what role ROR1 might play in the progression of melanoma.

The researchers were able to determine that ROR1 inhibited the invasion of melanoma cells, and this receptor was targeted for degradation by Wnt5A and ROR2. When ROR1 was silenced, the researchers observed that there was an increased rate of invasion of melanoma cells both in vitro and in vivo. The researchers also found that hypoxia areas of low oxygen supply in the tumor is able to induce a switch from ROR1 to ROR2 and results in an increase in levels of Wnt5A, suggesting the switch from a non-invasive ROR1-positive phenotype to an invasive ROR2-positive phenotype occurs when the tumor is exposed to hypoxic conditions. The researchers also found that a protein HIF1α is required to increase the Wnt5A expressed. When HIF1α was removed, ROR2 was decreased, indicating that the upregulation of ROR2 via HIF1α requires Wnt5A.

To determine the clinical implications, the researchers hypothesized that melanoma cells driven by the mutant BRAF gene that were also high in Wnt5A might be less sensitive to treatment with vemurafenib, a drug approved by the FDA in 2011 for the treatment of BRAF-positive metastatic melanoma. By measuring BRAF cell lines to determine their Wnt5A and ROR2 status, as well as their sensitivity to BRAF inhibitors, the researchers found a significant correlation between BRAF inhibitor resistance and Wnt5A expression. Additionally, in a small cohort of patients, they found that seven out of nine patients who demonstrated less than a 33 percent clinical response to vemurafenib had a positive expression of Wnt5A, and only two of the remaining 15 patients who had a 38% or greater clinical response to vemurafenib exhibited any Wnt5A expression. When they silenced ROR2 in tumors xenografted in mice, the tumors responded far better to simultaneous treatment with the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib. Conversely, when ROR1 was silenced, the tumors became more resistant to the drug.

Additionally, in eight patients who had undergone BRAF inhibitor therapy, the levels of Wnt5A were much lower in tumor cells prior to therapy compared to cells that were tested for Wnt5A after those same patients had relapsed.

"By using Wnt5A as a biomarker, we could determine which patients are likely to respond better to therapy with vemurafenib and help prolong that response," Weeraratna said. "There is also the potential to explore small molecule inhibitors of ROR2, since there is now a clear association between that and the ability of melanoma to become not only metastatic, but also therapy-resistant. This link between metastasis and therapy resistance is what we find the most exciting and intriguing, as therapies designed to target one process may have a significant impact on the other as well. "

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The co-authors of the study are members of the Tumor Metastasis and Microenvironment Program and the Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program at Wistar. They include Michael P. O'Connell,Ph.D.; Katie Marchbank, Ph.D.; Marie R. Webster, Ph.D.; Alexander A. Valiga; Amanpreet Kaur; Adina Vultur, Ph.D.; Ling Li, M.D.; Meenhard Herlyn, D.Vm., D.Sc.; and Sandy Widura in the Tumor Metastasis and Microenvironment Program, and Jessie Villanueva, Ph.D.; Qin Liu, M.D., Ph.D.; and Xiangfan Yin in the Molecular Cellular Oncogenesis Program. O'Connell is the lead author of the study. The researchers also collaborated with the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health; Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center; the Lehigh Valley Health Network; and the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

This study was made possible in part by grants from the National Institute on Aging Intramural Research Program, the PA Department of Health (CURE) funding, and the Joanna M. Nicolay Foundation.

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