Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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VP Joe Biden guest stars as celebrity crush on “Parks and Rec”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Someone has a big crush on U.S. Vice President Joe Biden – and now she is getting to meet him.

Biden will make his TV acting debut with a cameo on NBC‘s comedy “Parks and Recreation” as the celebrity crush of actress Amy Poehler‘s ditzy local councilwoman Leslie Knope, NBC said on Thursday.

Biden, 69, will play himself in the episode “Leslie vs. April,” airing November 15, where Knope, a city councilwoman for the fictional small town of Pawnee, Indiana, has a surprise meeting with the vice president in Washington D.C.

Knope has long described her ideal man as having the “brains of George Clooney and the body of Joe Biden.”

“Meeting Vice President Biden was a thrill for me and for Leslie,” Poehler said in a statement.

“He was a good sport and a great improviser. The vice president maintained his composure while I harassed him and invaded his personal space. The nation of ‘Parks and Rec’ will be forever grateful,” she added.

The scenes with Biden were shot in July in the chambers of the vice president’s ceremonial office, during the TV show’s recent trip to the nation’s capital to film scenes for this season’s storylines.

The biggest challenge of landing Biden’s cameo was keeping it a secret before Tuesday’s U.S. elections. Airing the episode prior to November 6 could have been equivalent to a campaign contribution to advertise a candidate, executive producer Michael Schur told Entertainment Weekly.

“Parks and Recreation” follows the Pawnee Parks department and its tireless deputy Knope, who puts all her efforts into improving her little hometown.

This is a big season for Poehler’s character, who is finally elected into city government, gets engaged to campaign advisor Ben Wyatt and meets her political heroes including Senators Barbara Boxer, Olympia Snow and John McCain, who were featured in September’s season premiere.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ask an Expert: Wondering About Alzheimer’s? Ask Here

This week’s Ask the Expert features Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, who will answer questions related to Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. He is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and an author of “The Alzheimer’s Action Plan.” Dr. Doraiswamy has also served as an adviser to government agencies, advocacy groups and businesses.

About five million Americans today live with Alzheimer’s disease, and a new diagnosis is made about every 70 seconds. Cases are expected to triple over the coming decades as baby boomers age.

Misperceptions and misdiagnoses are common about Alzheimer’s, which ranks second to only cancer among diseases that adults fear the most. Many people do not understand that there are dozens of causes for memory loss besides Alzheimer’s, including many that can be fully reversed if caught early.

Among the questions Dr. Doraiswamy is prepared to answer:

What are the best tests to determine if it is or isn’t Alzheimer’s?

How do you determine your own risk?

What are the family-care options? Medications for memory? Medications for behavior problems? Preventive strategies?

What has been learned from the latest clinical trials?

How can you improve your memory?

Please leave your questions in the comments section. Answers will be posted on Wednesday.

You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming.

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Debt Ceiling Complicates a Tax Shift

WASHINGTON — Come January, should Congress fail to act, the United States will face more than immense tax increases and spending cuts. It will also run out of room to finance its large running deficits.

The Treasury Department expects the country to hit its debt ceiling, a legal limit on the amount the government is allowed to borrow, close to the end of the year. That would give Congress only a matter of weeks to raise the ceiling, now about $16.4 trillion, before sending financial markets into a panic.

Congressional leaders have made clear that the debt ceiling will be part of the intense negotiations over the so-called fiscal cliff, with many members unwilling to raise the ceiling without a broader deal. That has raised financial analysts’ worries of a financial market panic over the ceiling in addition to the slow bleed of the tax increases and spending cuts.

Congressional action is required to raise the debt limit. The Treasury can jostle payments for a few months. But expenses will eventually overwhelm revenue, putting the administration in the position of choosing which bills to pay. It might stop paying soldiers, for instance, or sending Social Security payments.

In 2011, Congressional Republicans would not raise the debt ceiling without a broader agreement to cut the country’s deficit and set it on a better fiscal path. The impasse over finding spending cuts and tax increases to do that led to the creation of the spending cuts on Jan. 1, the same time the Bush-era tax cuts were set to expire.

The threat that the country might not pay all its bills caused a slump in financial markets and led in August 2011 to the first downgrade of the nation’s credit rating. It left broader economic scars, too. Many economists contend it hurt economic growth and jobs.

A July report by the Government Accountability Office found that the delay in raising the debt limit increased the country’s borrowing costs by about $1.3 billion in the 2011 fiscal year. “However, this does not account for the multiyear effects on increased costs for Treasury securities that will remain outstanding after fiscal year 2011,” the report noted, adding that the debt-limit fight diverted Treasury’s time and resources from other priorities.

This year, Congress will have time to negotiate a broader debt deal before needing to raise the ceiling, even if negotiations spill into January. But the ceiling will be a card in the complex political game that the White House, Senate Democrats and Congressional Republicans are playing.

Much as Democrats see President Obama’s veto threat over an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest earners as leverage over Republicans, some Republicans see the need to raise the debt ceiling as leverage over the White House, Republican aides said.

Even if the stakes do not get that high, both parties view lifting the debt ceiling as part of the fiscal-cliff negotiations, and they do not expect Congress to raise it outside of a broader deal.

“Resolving the issues surrounding the fiscal cliff, especially the replacement of the sequester, and the next debt limit increase (likely necessary in February) will require that the president get serious about real entitlement reform,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in a letter to conservatives this week, as printed on The Hill Web site.

That has Democrats warning Republicans not to risk the country’s credit rating and broader financial stability again.

“They tried it before: ‘We’re going to shut down the government. We’re not going to raise the debt limit,’ ” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, told reporters this week. “They want to go through that again? Fine, but we’re not going to be held subject to something that was done as a matter of fact in all previous administrations.”

Economists have warned that the political posturing over the debt ceiling has enormously dangerous economic consequences — even more so than last year, given the threat of huge tax increases and spending cuts hitting households at the same time.

On Wall Street, analysts have tended to use terms like “apocalypse” and “global catastrophe” to describe what might happen should Congress not lift the ceiling.

This week, Fitch, the credit rating agency, threatened a downgrade to the nation’s credit rating if Congress cannot find a timely resolution.

“Failure to reach even a temporary arrangement to prevent the full range of tax increases and spending cuts implied by the fiscal cliff and a repeat of the August 2011 debt ceiling episode would mean that the general election had not resolved the political gridlock in Washington and likely result in a sovereign rating downgrade by Fitch,” analysts at the agency said in a statement on Wednesday.

HSBC analysts this week warned clients of “echoes of 2011” in the uncertainty and market volatility the ceiling might cause.

And economists at the International Monetary Fund cautioned that the unstable situation in the United States might have international ripple effects.

“For now, a lack of political agreement keeps uncertainty about the fiscal road map unresolved,” the fund said in a global risk assessment. “Although bond yields remain low, when contentious political decisions — such as raising the debt ceiling — have come due in the past, uncertainty about the outcome led to unfavorable market reactions.”

But other analysts said they would be surprised if the debate over the ceiling became the debacle it did last year. Many Congressional aides said neither side had any interest in causing market panic for political gain.

“Markets are now starting to become the disciplinarians,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago. “C.E.O.’s are finally stepping up to the plate and saying, ‘Excuse me, we can’t do this.’ And that puts political donations and jobs on the line.”

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Blue reign in Sacramento: Democrats dominate California voting

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown and his fellow Democrats are on the cusp of a coveted supermajority in both the Assembly and Senate, giving them the rare power to raise taxes without any Republican support.

No single party has held such a supermajority in Sacramento since 1933.

To cement the dual two-thirds majorities when the Legislature gets down to business next year, Democrats must hold onto one of two Senate seats to be vacated and a few Assembly seats won in tight races. The Senate seats will be filled in special elections expected in March.

The supermajorities would mark a dramatic shift in Sacramento's balance of power, where GOP legislators have aggressively used their ability to block state budget plans and prevent revenue increases to scale back the scope of state government.

Coupled with the approval of Brown's tax plan, Proposition 30, the Democrats now have not only the power but also the money to break free of the deficit that has paralyzed state government for years.

The pressure on Democrats to restore funding for the many services slashed to balance the budget in recent years will be intense.

Already, activists are pressing lawmakers to pump new money into such programs as college scholarships, dental care for the needy and, of course, public schools.

But the first move Brown and legislative leaders made Wednesday was to reassure voters that they would show restraint.

They promised there would be no frenzy of tax hikes.

"Voters have trusted the elected representatives, maybe even trusted me to some extent, and now we've got to meet that trust," Brown said at a Wednesday news conference in the Capitol. "We've got to make sure over the next few years that we pay our bills, we invest in the right programs, but we don't go on any spending binges."

Still, lawmakers can appear to hold the line on revenue generation without actually doing so.

Supermajorities allow lawmakers to impose new fees to pay for infrastructure and other programs that are not technically defined as taxes.

And the same Democrats who are talking tough about fiscal responsibility this week have for years been touting the programs they want to restore or start once the opportunity is there. In addition to raising revenue, they would also be empowered to bring constitutional changes and other measures to voters without any GOP signoff — and to override gubernatorial vetoes.

Given a supermajority, "We're going to use it," Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said Wednesday.

"It will be an awesome responsibility," Steinberg said. "But it's very exciting.''

Steinberg briefed the media on his desire to overhaul the tax code.

The result, he acknowledged, could be more money for the state budget.

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles), who vowed there would be no additional tax increases next year, laid out goals that could trigger more government spending, such as helping students pay for college.

The success Tuesday of Brown's Proposition 30, which raises billions of dollars through temporary income-tax increases on high earners and a quarter-cent surcharge on sales, gives lawmakers breathing room they have not had in years.

With one election, a deficit that has rendered Sacramento dysfunctional and threatened to ravage public schools has been largely wiped out.

Read More..

Apple slides to five-month low, uncertainty grows

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Taylor Swift reigns over Billboard 200, Meek Mill debuts high

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country-pop star Taylor Swift held onto the top spot on the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday as her latest album “Red” kept rapper Meek Mill from the top spot.

“Red,” Swift’s fourth studio album safely took the No. 1 position after selling 344,000 copies according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Last week, “Red” scored the highest first week U.S. sales in a decade after selling 1.2 million copies. The album has outsold One Direction’s “Up All Night” to become the second-biggest album of 2012, behind Adele’s juggernaut record “21,” which has sold more than 4 million copies this year.

Rapper Meek Mill entered the chart at No. 2 with his debut studio album “Dreams & Nightmares,” selling 164,000 copies. The rapper collaborated with fellow Maybach Music artists for his debut, including Trey Songz, Wale, Rick Ross and Mary J. Blige.

Ahead of the holiday season, two festive albums debuted on the chart, with veteran crooner Rod Stewart’s “Merry Christmas Baby” at No. 3 and Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s extended play record “Dreams of Fireflies (On a Christmas Night)” at No. 9.

Country singer Toby Keith landed at No. 6 with his latest album “Hope on the Rocks,” following his appearance and best music video win at the County Music Association (CMA) awards last week.

Country group Little Big Town also saw a boost from their CMA vocal group of the year win as their album “Tornado” climbed the chart to No. 10.

Canadian singer Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse scored their second top ten album this year with “Psychedelic Pill” at No. 8, following their “Americana” album in June.

Over on the Digital Songs chart, Korean rapper Psy held the top spot with his infectious dance-pop single “Gangnam Style,” while Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven” remained at No. 2 and Ke$ ha’s “Die Young” was a non-mover at No. 3.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ask an Expert: Wondering About Alzheimer’s? Ask Here

This week’s Ask the Expert features Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, who will answer questions related to Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. He is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and an author of “The Alzheimer’s Action Plan.” Dr. Doraiswamy has also served as an adviser to government agencies, advocacy groups and businesses.

About five million Americans today live with Alzheimer’s disease, and a new diagnosis is made about every 70 seconds. Cases are expected to triple over the coming decades as baby boomers age.

Misperceptions and misdiagnoses are common about Alzheimer’s, which ranks second to only cancer among diseases that adults fear the most. Many people do not understand that there are dozens of causes for memory loss besides Alzheimer’s, including many that can be fully reversed if caught early.

Among the questions Dr. Doraiswamy is prepared to answer:

What are the best tests to determine if it is or isn’t Alzheimer’s?

How do you determine your own risk?

What are the family-care options? Medications for memory? Medications for behavior problems? Preventive strategies?

What has been learned from the latest clinical trials?

How can you improve your memory?

Please leave your questions in the comments section.

You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming.

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DealBook: On Wall Street, Time to Mend Fences With Obama

Del Frisco’s, an expensive steakhouse with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Boston harbor, was a festive scene on Tuesday evening. The hedge fund billionaires Steven A. Cohen, Paul Singer and Daniel Loeb were among the titans of finance there dining among the gray velvet banquettes before heading several blocks away to what they hoped would be a victory party for their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

The next morning was a cold, sobering one for these executives.

Few industries have made such a one-sided bet as Wall Street did in opposing President Obama and supporting his Republican rival. The top five sources of contributions to Mr. Romney, a former top private equity executive, were big banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Wealthy financiers — led by hedge fund investors — were the biggest group of givers to the main “super PAC” backing Mr. Romney, providing almost $33 million, and gave generously to outside groups in races around the country.

On Wednesday, Mr. Loeb, who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008, was sanguine. “You win some, you lose some,” he said in an interview. “We can all disagree. I have friends and we have spirited discussions. Sure, I am not getting invited to the White House anytime soon, but as citizens of the country we are all friendly.”

Wall Street, however, now has to come to terms with an administration it has vilified. What Washington does next will be critically important for the industry, as regulatory agencies work to put their final stamp on financial regulations and as tax increases and spending cuts are set to take effect in the new year unless a deal to avert them is reached. To not have a friend in the White House at this time is one thing, but to have an enemy is quite another.

“Wall Street is now going to have to figure out how to make this relationship work,” said Glenn Schorr, an analyst who follows the big banks for the investment bank Nomura. “It’s not impossible, but it’s not the starting point they had hoped for.”

Traditionally, the financial industry has tended to support Republican candidates, but, being pragmatic about power, has also donated to Democrats. That script got a rewrite in 2008, when many on Wall Street supported Mr. Obama as an intelligent leader for a country reeling from the financial crisis. Goldman employees were the leading source of campaign donations for Mr. Obama, who reaped far more contributions — roughly $16 million — from Wall Street than did his opponent, John McCain.

The love affair between Wall Street and Mr. Obama soured soon after he took office and championed an overhaul in financial regulations that became the Dodd-Frank Act.

Some financial executives complained that in meetings with the president, they found him disinterested and disengaged, while others on Wall Street never forgave Mr. Obama for calling them “fat cats.”

The disillusionment with the president spawned reams of critical commentary from Wall Street executives.

“So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire,” Mr. Loeb wrote in one letter to his investors.

The rhetoric at times became extreme, like the time Steven A. Schwarzman, co-founder of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, compared a tax proposal to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” (Mr. Schwarzman later apologized for the remark.)

Mr. Loeb was not alone in switching allegiances in the recent presidential race. Hedge fund executives like Leon Cooperman who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008 were big backers of Mr. Romney in 2012. And Wall Street chieftains like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, who have publicly been Democrats in the past, kept a low profile during this election. But their firms’ employees gave money to Mr. Romney in waves.

Starting over with the Obama White House will not be easy. One senior Wall Street lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity said Wall Street “made a bad mistake” in pushing so hard for Mr. Romney. “They are going to pay a price,” he said. “It will soften over time, but there will be a price.”

Mr. Obama is not without supporters on Wall Street. Prominent executives like Hamilton James of Blackstone, and Robert Wolf, a former top banker at UBS, were in Chicago on Tuesday night, celebrating with the president.

“What we learned is the people on Wall Street have one vote just like everyone else,” Mr. Wolf said. Still, while the support Wall Street gave Mr. Romney is undeniable, Mr. Wolf said, “Mr. Obama wants a healthy private sector, and that includes Wall Street.

“If you look at fiscal reform, infrastructure, immigration and education, they are all bipartisan issues and are more aligned than some people make it seem.”

Reshma Saujani, a former hedge fund lawyer who was among Mr. Obama’s top bundlers this year and is planning to run for city office next year, agreed.

“Most people in the financial services sector are social liberals who support gay marriage and believe in a woman’s right to choose, so I think many of them will swing back to Democrats in the future,” she said.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 8, 2012

An earlier version of this article misidentified Reshma Saujani as a male.

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Troops heard shots on night of Afghan massacre

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — American troops heard sporadic gunfire coming from the Afghan village of Alkozai for more than half an hour but failed to act on it, learning later that at least four people were shot to death, allegedly by a U.S. Army staff sergeant, several soldiers testified Tuesday.

Two guards stationed on the roof of the operations center at Camp Belambay southwest of Kandahar said they used thermal imaging in an attempt to trace the gunfire and shot up a flare to illuminate the empty farm fields, at which point the sound of the shooting stopped.

"We heard first one or two, then another one or two," Pfc. Derek Guinn testified at a preliminary hearing for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who is accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians and wounding six others in attacks that night on the villages of Alkozai and Najiban.

"I'd never heard gunfire before, in my time. That was my first time hearing it at night," Guinn said. "The shots weren't coming toward us, so we didn't panic."

He and the other guard reported it to the operations center, who advised them to keep an eye on it. The timing — beginning about 1:15 a.m. — is about when prosecutors say Bales, 39, stole out of the camp, walked about half a mile north to Alkozai and opened fire. Villagers told U.S. authorities that four people were killed and six others were wounded.

The Article 32 hearing on Bales is intended to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to send the Lake Tapps, Wash., resident and veteran of four combat deployments to a court-martial on charges of premeditated murder.

The day's testimony also provided the first suggestion that some U.S. troops suspected that Bales, if he left the base, may not have been acting entirely alone.

Their concerns emerged after Guinn was approached about 3 a.m. by an interpreter working with Afghan army guards at the U.S. outpost who told him they had seen not one but two U.S. troops returning to the base that night, after which one American soldier left again.

Army prosecutors have said that Bales was seen leaving the base by an Afghan guard sometime after midnight, and was spotted leaving again a few hours later. They believe Bales traveled first to Alkozai, then made a second foray to Najiban, where 12 people were shot to death.

Guinn alerted two other soldiers and they began wondering whether one of Bales' friends had been outside the camp with him earlier that night. They approached Army criminal investigators with their concerns.

They identified one soldier who they said had been drinking and inexplicably appeared to have freshly showered and shaved just as Bales was reported missing.

"We talked between us and there were kind of suspicions that someone else might have been involved," said Cpl. David Wofford, one of the three who reported their concerns. "Your brain starts working, maybe he had blood on his hair … and went so far as to shave it off."

But Army prosecutors quickly got Wofford to admit that he was speculating. Though Afghan villagers have often said they believe there was more than one gunman, U.S. Army officials have repeatedly discounted that possibility.

The day also included testimony that before Bales was flown off the base, he told other soldiers they would be grateful to him when fighting season starts.

"He said, 'You guys are going to thank me, come June,'" Sgt. 1st Class James Stillwell testified.

By June, Stillwell said, he assumed Bales was referring to the onset of warm weather in Afghanistan, which normally marks the resumption of heavy-duty fighting after a winter lull.

kim.murphy@latimes.com

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