Newspapers Online.. 06-24-2013 ScienceTechnology

Island Air, a Honolulu-based carrier with a handful of island-hopping planes that Ellison bought in February, confirmed discussions between Island and Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group, the parent company of Hawaii's interisland go! Airlines.

"We are committed to building a strong regional airline and part of that process is exploring all options including discussions with Mesa Air," Island Air Chief Executive Officer Paul Casey said in a one-sentence statement.

Honolulu's Star-Advertiser newspaper reported on Thursday that Ellison was arranging to take control of go! Airlines, citing an unnamed source familiar with the deal.

Mesa CEO Jonathan Ornstein was not immediately available for comment. A spokeswoman said the airline flies 40 flights a day in Hawaii using a fleet of five 50-seat CRJ-200 jets.

Oracle declined to comment.

Hawaii aviation historian Peter Forman said a deal for Island Air to purchase go! would not only secure more flights for Ellison's island of Lanai, but also could indicate that Ellison intends to become a player in the Hawaiian airline market.

Many industry observers have expected another airline to enter Hawaii to compete with Hawaiian Airlines for the tourist- rich interisland market. Combining go! and Island Air would give Ellison critical mass and a platform from which to compete.

"He's gaining the recognition that he is serious about becoming the second interisland airline in Hawaii. There has been a vacuum for serious competition to Hawaiian (Airlines)," Forman said.

In March 2013, Forbes Magazine listed Ellison, 68, as the world's fifth richest man, and the third richest American, with a net worth of $43 billion.

The funding will be launched on Monday at a 4:00 p.m. lender call that the billionaire investor is expected to join, the sources said.

The $5.2 billion is split between a $2.2 billion six-year term loan B-1 and a $3 billion three-year term loan B-2. The six-year tranche will have standard 1 percent amortization, while the shorter-dated tranche amortizes at 10 percent, they said.

Icahn declined to comment on details of the term loans on Friday.

As previously reported, initial price guidance in May was in the LIB+350 area, subject to change due to market conditions.

Earlier this week, Icahn repeated his interest in owning Dell, saying in a telephone interview with Thomson Reuters LPC on Tuesday that he was moving forward with his plans to line up $5.2 billion in credit facilities. His comments echoed statements he made earlier that day in an open letter to Dell shareholders.

"Nothing has changed regarding the financing," Icahn said in the interview. "We expect to have $5.2 billion in the next couple of weeks. Our investment bank is already committing $1.6 billion and my affiliates and I would provide $2 billion, if necessary."

Icahn's letter to Dell's shareholders came on the heels of a series of reports that Icahn could exit the Dell race after struggling to raise the $5.2 billion in debt he needed to back a leveraged recapitalization he proposed to Dell's board on May 9.

In May, Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management initiated talks with banks and asset managers to line up financing to back a leveraged recapitalization of Dell as an alternative to an existing buyout offer led by Dell and Silver Lake Partners for $13.65 a share, or $24.4 billion. Jefferies has already committed $1.6 billion.

FUNDING SEEN READY BEFORE JULY 18 VOTE

Icahn is expected to have the financing lined up for a July 18 shareholder vote on the Silver Lake bid.

Icahn is offering a new path for shareholders. Under the May 9 leveraged recapitalization plan, Icahn proposed giving shareholders the option of receiving either a distribution of $12 per share in cash or $12 per share in stock valued at $1.65 per share. Now, Icahn is asking that Dell shareholders agree to a tender offer for 1.1 billion shares at $14 apiece in a stock buyback.

Edward Snowden, the onetime contract analyst for the National Security Agency, left Hong Kong after the U.S. government sought his extradition on espionage charges, WikiLeaks said. He landed in Moscow, where a CNN crew spotted a car with diplomatic plates and an Ecuadorian flag at the Russian capital's international airport.

WikiLeaks, which facilitates the publication of classified information, did not disclose what country would be Snowden's final destination. But Ecuador has already given WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange refuge in its embassy in London for a year after he unsuccessfully fought extradition to Sweden in British courts.

And Washington is asking Ecuador, as well as Cuba and Venezuela, not to admit Snowden, a senior Obama administration official told CNN on Sunday. The United States also is asking those countries to expel him if they do admit him, the official said, and a source familiar with the matter told CNN that the U.S. government has revoked Snowden's passport.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it was routine to revoke the passports of people charged with felonies. She would not comment specifically on the status of Snowden's passport, but said, "Persons wanted on felony charges, such as Mr. Snowden, should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States."

Snowden "left Hong Kong legally" and is headed to Ecuador "via a safe route for the purposes of asylum," WikiLeaks said in a statement issued Sunday afternoon. He is accompanied by diplomats and lawyers for WikiLeaks, including former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, according to a statement from the organization.

"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr. Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," said Garzon, who also represents Assange. "What is being done to Mr. Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange -- for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest -- is an assault against the people."

The bug, which has since been repaired, was part of the Download Your Information tool, which lets Facebook users export all the data from profiles, such as posts to their timeline and conversations with friends. People using the tool may have downloaded inadvertently the contact information for people they were somehow connected to.

Some people upload their contact lists or address books to Facebook, which the company then uses to suggest new friends they can connect with who are already using the service.

Though the number of people impacted is sizable, the actual spread of their contact information appears to be limited. The phone numbers and e-mail addresses were not exposed to developers or posted publicly. It is only shown to people they had at least a tentative connection with, and who may have already had their contact information.

Even in that pool, it was only exposed to people who had used the data-exporting tool. "For almost all of the email addresses or telephone numbers impacted, each individual email address or telephone number was only included in a download once or twice. This means, in almost all cases, an email address or telephone number was only exposed to one person," Facebook's security team said in a post.

The company says it has no evidence that the bug was "exploited maliciously" and that there have been no complaints so far.

The social media company announced the bug on Friday afternoon. The issue was discovered by a third-party security researcher who submitted it through Facebook's White Hat program.

Facebook's White Hat program is set up so that people such as security researchers can report any vulnerabilities they find on the social network and get a reward for $500 and up in return.

These types of programs are common at Internet companies.

Now Miralda fears a new government energy policy will deepen cuts to renewable energy subsidies, wipe out his savings and push his business over the brink.

Small-scale photovoltaic (PV) energy producers like Miralda started investing in solar panels when the government was offering lucrative subsidies under a decade-long drive to become a global leader in green energy.

But a prolonged economic recession and a yawning budget gap forced Madrid to pull back its support for renewables, and more cuts are on the way, threatening major losses on personal investments and even defaults on bank loans.

Banks financed 80 percent of a total 25 billion euros ($33.5 billion) invested in PV installations in Spain, according to industry association ANPIER, of which Miralda is one of about 4,300 members.

While big companies also raced to develop wind and solar technologies, the vast majority of PV investments were by small-time savers.

Miralda made a down-payment on a solar farm in Benabarre, Huesca, launched as a cooperative with eight other investors in 2008 when government-guaranteed returns on investments were more attractive than sovereign bond yields and an unpredictable stock market.

His local bank put up 70 percent of the financing.

"I decided to do it because it seemed like a safe, profitable investment backed by the government. I'd always been interested in energy, and I thought it was a good way to help our country's economic development," Miralda, 65, told Reuters.

"I trusted the terms laid out in the 2007 law," he said, referring to the royal decree that became a cornerstone for PV investments before successive changes to the law that have dented revenues by 40 percent.

The royal decree guaranteed regulated revenues of 450 euros per megawatt hour, but with 3,861 MW of PV capacity in 2010 - 10 times the government's goal - it started to limit entitlement to incentives.

Now Miralda says revenue from his solar farm is not enough to cover payments on his loan, which is backed by his home, or the maintenance on his 500-kilowatt installation.

Further cuts expected by mid-July could be critical.

"This Tuesday, I'll lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go - a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change and lead global efforts to fight it," he said in a White House video.

Obama made tackling climate change a top priority in his inaugural address in January when he began his second term. His speech will be at Georgetown University, the day before he goes on a three-nation tour of Africa.

In his video message, Obama outlined what would be a major national effort to address climate change. He said scientists will be needed to design new fuels, farmers to grow them, engineers to devise new sources of energy and workers to build the foundation for a clean energy economy.

"There's no single step that can reverse the effects of climate change. But when it comes to the world we leave our children, we owe it to them to do what we can," he said.

Sources familiar with his plans have said Obama is likely to roll out a number of measures on climate policy. They may include a strategy to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, which account for roughly 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

Controlling carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning coal and other fossil fuels, is seen as a vital step in confronting climate change.

Federal regulations are still pending on power plants that have yet to be built, after the Environmental Protection Agency missed an April deadline to roll out emissions rules.

However, environmentalists have been pushing Obama's administration to go after a bigger target and set tighter standards for the roughly 1,400 coal-fired burners that already feed the nation's electric grid.

It is unclear if Obama's speech on Tuesday will make any reference to TransCanada Corp's proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport heavy crude oil from Canada's oil sands region to the refineries on the Gulf Coast.

Opponents say the 830,000-barrel-per-day pipeline, which awaits U.S. approval, would raise greenhouse gas emissions and lock the United States into oil dependency for decades into the future.

The White House's top energy and climate adviser, Heather Zichal, said recently that Obama will take several steps to make tackling climate change a second-term priority.

Waiters, taxi drivers and sales staff in the French capital all too often come off as impolite, unhelpful and unable to speak foreign languages say local tourism chiefs, who are handing out a manual with guidelines on better etiquette.

A six-page booklet entitled "Do you speak Touriste?" contains greetings in eight languages including German, Chinese and Portuguese and advice on the spending habits and cultural codes of different nationalities.

"The British like to be called by their first names," the guide explains, while Italians should be shaken by the hand and Americans reassured on prices.

Of the Chinese, the fastest-growing category of tourists visiting the City of Light, the guide says they are "fervent shoppers" and that "a simple smile and hello in their language will fully satisfy them."

France is the world's top destination for foreign tourists, with Paris visited by 29 million people last year. The business tourists bring to hotels, restaurants and museums accounts for one in 10 jobs in the region and is a welcome boost to the economy at a time of depressed domestic consumption.

The Paris chamber of commerce and the regional tourism committee have warned, however, that growing competition from friendlier cities like London meant Paris needed to work harder to attract visitors, especially from emerging market countries.

Some 30,000 copies of the handbook on friendly service is being distributed to taxi drivers, waiters, hotel managers and sales people in tourist areas from the banks of the Seine river up to Montmartre and in nearby Versailles and Fontainebleau.

UK scientists say they were "amazed" to find an example of such a sophisticated arithmetic calculation in biology.

Mathematical models show that the amount of starch consumed overnight is calculated by division in a process involving leaf chemicals, a John Innes Centre team reports in e-Life journal.

Birds may use similar methods to preserve fat levels during migration.

The scientists studied the plant Arabidopsis, which is regarded as a model plant for experiments.

'Astonished'

Overnight, when the plant cannot use energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into sugars and starch, it must regulate its starch reserves to ensure they last until dawn.

Experiments by scientists at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, show that to adjust its starch consumption so precisely, the plant must be performing a mathematical calculation - arithmetic division.

"They're actually doing maths in a simple, chemical way - that's amazing, it astonished us as scientists to see that," study leader Prof Alison Smith told BBC News.

"This is pre-GCSE maths they're doing, but they're doing maths."

The scientists used mathematical modelling to investigate how a division calculation can be carried out inside a plant.

During the night, mechanisms inside the leaf measure the size of the starch store. Information about time comes from an internal clock, similar to the human body clock.

'Sophisticated'

The researchers proposed that the process is mediated by the concentrations of two kinds of molecules called "S" for starch and "T" for time.

If the S molecules stimulate starch breakdown, while the T molecules prevent this from happening, then the rate of starch consumption is set by the ratio of S molecules to T molecules. In other words, S divided by T.

"This is the first concrete example in biology of such a sophisticated arithmetic calculation," said mathematical modeller Prof Martin Howard, of the John Innes Centre.

The scientists think similar mechanisms may operate in animals such as birds to control fat reserves during migration over long distances, or when they are deprived of food when incubating eggs.

Dell argued his case in a presentation filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, saying that keeping any part of the company public while it transformed itself would hurt Dell's stock price.

That in turn would threaten customer perception and make it more difficult to keep employees, he said.

If his buyout proposal fails to sway shareholders, he reiterated that he will remain with the company but said he "will also oppose the kind of imprudent leveraged recapitalization that has been suggested by certain other parties."

Activist shareholder Carl Icahn, who says Dell's offer undervalues the company, on Tuesday promised shareholders that the company would buy back up to $16 billion of stock if they joined his campaign to stop the computer maker from going private.

Dell could fund a tender offer for its own shares with debt financing, Icahn said.

Aurelie Filippetti said the government was looking for the right time to introduce a ban on the practice, which book sellers say threatens their business model by allowing Amazon to undercut their prices.

"I'm in favor of ending the possibility of offering both free delivery and a five percent discount," she told BFM news television on Friday. "We need a law, so we're going to find a legislative window to introduce one."

Amazon in France declined to comment.

Filippetti's remark underscored tensions between the French government and U.S. online firms such as Amazon and Google, which have been criticized for paying too little to the creators of cultural or news content.

France, like other European countries, bans retailers from discounting books more than 5 percent from a sale price set by the publisher. This is to prevent small sellers from being crushed by giant retailers that can absorb bigger discounts.

Guillaume Husson, spokesman for the SLF book retailers' union, said Amazon's practice of bundling a 5 percent discount with free delivery amounted to selling books at a loss, which was impossible for traditional book sellers of any size.

"Today, the competition is unfair... No other book retailer, whether a small or large book or even a chain, can allow itself to lose that much money," he said, referring to Amazon's alleged losses on free delivery.

The SLF union had sued Amazon for unfair competition before a French court, and the case was still being reviewed, he added.

France settled a dispute with Google in February over whether it should pay content providers for linking to news articles, which resulted in the firm creating a 60-million-euro fund to support the press. France made a new push against Google this week, arguing it broke French privacy laws.

Filippetti's comments raised the possibility of a similar public spat with Amazon.

The delay comes amid reports that the FAA advisers are expected to recommend the agency relax its guidelines and allow passengers to use more personal electronics on flights.

"At the group's request, the FAA has granted a two month extension to complete the additional work necessary for the safety assessment. We will wait for the group to finish its work before we determine next steps," the agency said.

Currently, FAA guidelines allow airlines some flexibility in whether they allow passengers to use certain personal electronic devices because of concerns they may pose a safety hazard by interfering with radio frequencies and disrupting aircraft systems.

Most airlines tell travelers not to use iPods, music players, laptops and other gadgets during takeoffs and landings, and cellphones are also generally not allowed anytime during flights.

The Wall Street Journal, citing industry officials and a draft copy of the panel's report, said on Friday that the group will recommend relaxing restrictions on electronic gadgets but will not address the rules barring cellphone use.

NBC News also reported that the recommendations are likely to call for allowing passengers to use devices such as electronic readers, and that FAA officials are likely to adopt the change.

"We're working on various methods in terms of how we can increase our video views, and watching," Mayer said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Thursday. "It's clear to me that our video business is something that's growing a lot. It's something that we'd like to accelerate."

Yahoo is currently bidding to acquire Hulu, the online hub for TV programming owned by Walt Disney Co and News Corp, sources with knowledge of the situation have told Reuters.

Mayer would not comment on the bid for Hulu.

The Web pioneer was looking at buying French video site DailyMotion but had to abandon the effort after objections from the French government.

Yahoo also has a growing menu of original video programming, such as the critically-acclaimed Burning Love TV reality show spoof, and it recently acquired the rights to the archive of Saturday Night Live television programs.

Online video commands higher ad rates than other types of Web content and has become a fiercely competitive arena as it is increasingly viewed as a bulwark against the steady decline in prices for online display ads.

On Thursday, Instagram, the mobile photo-sharing app owned by Facebook Inc, introduced a new feature that allows users to create 15-second videos. Facebook itself is reported to be readying an online video ad format. Google Inc's YouTube, the world's No.1 online video destination, is expected to generate $5 billion in revenue this year, according to RBC Capital Markets.

Mayer took the top job at Yahoo after a tumultuous period in which the company had churned through several CEOs and many of its top executives and engineers jumped ship.

She has revamped key products such as mail and the Yahoo home page, implemented morale-boosting measures like free food, and jumpstarted acquisitions. On Thursday, Yahoo closed its $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, a blogging service that is one of the Web's most popular hubs of user-generated content.

Yahoo's stock has surged roughly 70 percent since Mayer became CEO. But Wall Street analysts say much of the gain has come from stock buybacks and from Yahoo's Asian assets, including a 24 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce giant and potential IPO debutante Alibaba Group.

PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY