AMR avoids investigation into $2.26 billion debt deals

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hedge fund Marathon Asset Management has withdrawn a request for an independent investigator to examine the books of American Airlines, a unit of bankrupt AMR Corp, lawyers for the companies said at a hearing on Thursday.

The move came after AMR agreed to preserve potential clawback claims relating to debt deals, struck between Marathon and AMR, that left American Airlines with $ 2.26 billion of debt.

AMR entered bankruptcy last November, and is considering its options for emerging either as a standalone firm or to merge with smaller competitor US Airways Group, which is making an aggressive takeover push.

Marathon, which has said it holds “well over” $ 100 million of AMR debt, last month sought an examiner to probe intercompany transactions consummated in the weeks before AMR’s Chapter 11 filing. The deals transferred about $ 2.26 billion of debt from AMR’s American Eagle unit to American Airlines.

Marathon said in court papers it was concerned that potential legal claims to claw the money back would be barred under the language of a separate settlement, under which AMR refinanced about 200 of its aircraft.

AMR dismissed that argument in court filings as an “obvious litigation tactic.” But on Thursday, it agreed to expressly preserve such claims in exchange for Marathon dropping its request for an examiner, AMR attorney Richard Hahn said at the hearing in federal bankruptcy court in White Plains, N.Y..

The resolution also allows AMR to move forward with the underlying aircraft refinancing deal, which it says will save about $ 670 million on planes manufactured by Embraer.

Marathon has been taking a more vocal role in AMR’s bankruptcy, adding another layer of complexity to the already multi-faceted case.

The examiner request was Marathon’s second attempt to flex its muscles as a significant creditor, coming days after it sent a letter to AMR Chief Executive Tom Horton demanding more transparency about the airline’s restructuring efforts.

It remains unclear whether Marathon supports a standalone restructuring or a US Airways merger, or whether Marathon would be in a position to finance an independent exit from bankruptcy for AMR. But as a large debtholder, the hedge fund could be in a position to influence either scenario by objecting to plans it does not support.

US Airways would like to acquire AMR out of bankruptcy, while a group of debtholders including JPMorgan Chase & Co has expressed interest in financing a standalone exit.

AMR received court permission at Thursday’s hearing to extend for 30 days, through January 28, its unilateral control of its bankruptcy exit plan. That means US Airways cannot propose its own takeover plan until that date, and that any merger plan before that date would have to be a cooperative effort with AMR.

Labor issues will also affect AMR’s ability to emerge from bankruptcy independently.

High labor costs were a driving force in the company’s bankruptcy filing, and while the airline has reached new collective bargaining deals with its flight attendants’ and ground workers’ unions, it remains at odds with its pilots.

That could spook investors assessing the company’s stability going forward, and AMR’s creditors’ committee has said labor peace with pilots is a top priority.

While AMR and its pilots continue to negotiate, the pilots have said they support a merger with US Airways. They have also said they already have a tentative labor deal in place with US Airways.

The case is In re AMR Corp et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-15463.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Myanmar says Obama to visit later this month

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — President Barack Obama will make a groundbreaking visit later this month to Myanmar, an official said Thursday, following through with his policy of rapprochement to encourage democracy in the Southeast Asian nation.

The Myanmar official speaking from the capital, Naypyitaw, said Thursday that security for a visit on Nov. 18 or 19 had been prepared, but the schedule was not final. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to give information to the media.

The official said Obama would meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as government officials including reformist President Thein Sein.

It would be the first-ever visit to Myanmar by an American president. U.S. officials have not yet announced any plans for a visit, which would come less than two weeks after Obama’s election to a second term.

Obama’s administration has sought to encourage the recent democratic progress under Thein Sein by easing sanctions applied against Myanmar’s previous military regime.

Officials in nearby Thailand and Cambodia have already informally announced plans for visits by Obama that same week. Cambodia is hosting a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Thailand is a longtime close U.S. ally.

The visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, would be the culmination of a dramatic turnaround in relations with Washington as the country has shifted from five decades of ruinous military rule and shaken off the pariah status it had earned through its bloody suppression of democracy.

Obama’s ending of the long-standing U.S. isolation of Myanmar’s generals has played a part in coaxing them into political reforms that have unfolded with surprising speed in the past year. The U.S. has appointed a full ambassador and suspended sanctions to reward Myanmar for political prisoner releases and the election of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi to parliament.

From Myanmar’s point of view, the lifting of sanctions is essential for boosting a lagging economy that was hurt not only by sanctions that curbed exports and foreign investment, but also by what had been a protectionist, centralized approach. Thein Sein’s government has initiated major economic reforms in addition to political ones.

A procession of senior diplomats and world leaders have traveled to Myanmar, stopping both in the remote, opulent capital city, which was built by the former ruling junta, and at Suu Kyi’s dilapidated lakeside villa in the main city of Yangon, where she spent 15 years under house arrest. New Zealand announced Thursday that Prime Minister John Key would visit Myanmar after attending the regional meetings in Cambodia.

The most senior U.S. official to visit was Hillary Rodham Clinton, who last December became the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to Myanmar in 56 years.

The Obama administration regards the political changes in Myanmar as a marquee achievement in its foreign policy, and one that could dilute the influence of China in a country that has a strategic location between South and Southeast Asia, regions of growing economic importance.

But exiled Myanmar activists and human rights groups are likely to criticize an Obama visit as premature, rewarding Thein Sein before his political and economic reforms have truly taken root. The military — still dominant and implicated in rights abuses — has failed to prevent vicious outbreaks of communal violence in the west of the country that have left scores dead.

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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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“Dancing” co-host Brooke Burke has thyroid cancer

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Dancing with the Stars” co-host Brooke Burke said on Thursday that she has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and will need surgery.

The television presenter and model said in a three-minute video posted on the website Modernmom.com that she will need her thyroid removed.

“I need to have thyroid surgery and a thyroidectomy, which means I’m going to have a nice, big scar right here on neck,” Burke said, drawing a finger across her throat.

Burke, a former winner of ABC’s celebrity ballroom dancing competition, said she had a biopsy in July, but it had taken her months to go public with the results.

“I’m ready to deal with it, and I’m going to be fine,” she said.

There was no word on when the surgery would take place, but Burke’s publicist said her work schedule for “Dancing with the Stars” would not be affected.

Burke, 47, said in July that her doctor suggested she undergo a thyroid ultrasound after he felt a lump in her neck during a routine physical.

The thyroid is a gland in the neck that produces hormones that regulate vital body functions, such as heart rate and blood pressure.

Burke’s co-host Tom Bergeron said on Thursday during an appearance on the CBS chat show “The Talk” that he had known about her condition for several months. “We are all there with her,” he said.

“I’ve known about this for a few months … I have had experience with this in my family. You never want to hear the word cancer. But thyroid cancer is one of the most treatable cancers. It has an incredibly high success rate,” he said.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Factbox: President Barack Obama

(Reuters) – As the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, 51, signed into law a revamp of the national healthcare system and authorized the raid that killed Osama bin Laden but struggled to revive the economy and create jobs.

Obama won a second term on Tuesday with a victory over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Here are key facts about Obama, the nation’s first black president.

- Barack Obama has a personal background like no other president in U.S. history. His mother, Ann Dunham, was a white woman from Kansas and his father, Barack Obama Sr., was a black Kenyan who saw little of his son after a divorce when the boy was a toddler. Obama spent much of his childhood in Indonesia and then Hawaii, where he lived with his maternal grandparents.

- Obama struggled with his mixed racial background while growing up, writing in a memoir that he wondered “if something was wrong with me.” He also was troubled by the absence of his father, whom he considered a “myth,” and said that may have contributed to his use of marijuana and cocaine in his youth.

- Obama graduated from New York’s Columbia University in 1983 and worked in the business sector in New York and for a Chicago community group. In 1988 he went to Harvard Law School, where he became the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

- Obama‘s relationship with Congress has been problematic. Even when Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and the Senate, Republicans often stymied his initiatives. The situation became more difficult when tax-averse Republicans took over the majority in the House in 2010.

- In the early 1990s Obama worked in a voter registration campaign in Chicago, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and joined a law firm that specialized in civil rights and neighborhood development. He married Michelle Robinson, whom he met at a law firm when he was an intern and she was assigned to be his adviser.

- In his rare spare moments, the lanky Obama pursues his lifelong love of basketball with semi-regular games at an FBI gym. He also makes time for school functions and sports events of his daughters Sasha and Malia and tries to get out for an occasional “date night” with his wife.

- Obama‘s political career began with his election to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 and soared in 2004 when he gave a rousing keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. In November of that year he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

- Obama won the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination by defeating Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and New York senator, and then took the presidency by beating Republican Senator John McCain. His energetic campaign was built on a theme of “hope and change” fueled by powerful oratory.

- A mood of national optimism prevailed at Obama‘s inauguration on January 20, 2009, which drew an estimated 1.8 million people to the National Mall in Washington despite bitter cold. He began his presidency with a 68 percent approval rating.

- Obama simultaneously oversaw wars in Iraq, which he ended in 2011, and Afghanistan, as well as the U.S. military involvement in Libya that helped oust Muammar Gaddafi. In May 2011 he authorized the raid in which U.S. Navy SEALS killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan – a triumph he points to as indicative of a strong national security policy.

- Obama inherited an economic crisis so persistent that it was a threat to his re-election. Almost 800,000 jobs were lost the month he took over. In the early days of his administration, he pushed through an $ 831 billion economic stimulus package and renewed loans to automakers, even making the government a temporary part-owner of General Motors.

- The centerpiece of his domestic agenda was the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare reform law better known as Obamacare. Its purpose is to give all Americans affordable insurance and more protections but critics say it is expensive federal interference. A key aspect of the reform – requiring most Americans to get insurance or pay a penalty – survived a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court challenge.

- Obama has a reputation as a charming communicator but he also is criticized for being aloof and not building better relationships with congressional leaders.

(Writing by Bill Trott; editing by Christopher Wilson and Jim Loney)

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Euro growth forecast hits markets

7 November 2012 Last updated at 17:31 ET

Continue reading the main story

The European Commission has cut sharply its growth forecast for the eurozone, warning that the “difficult process of rebalancing will last for some time”.

It now projects the bloc will narrowly avoid recession next year, growing by 0.1%, compared with its previous estimate of 1% growth, and thinks the EU economy will shrink this year.

Unemployment would also continue to rise next year, the Commission said.

The revision helped push global stock markets lower.

The Paris and Frankfurt exchanges closed down 2%, while London’s FTSE 100 ended the day 1.6% lower. New York’s Dow Jones lost 313 points, or 2.4%, at 12,933, its lowest level since early August.

The euro also weakened against the dollar following the revision, falling by half a cent to $ 1.278. Against the pound, it fell by a fifth of a pence to 79.93p.

Figures released earlier on Wednesday showing the biggest monthly fall in German manufacturing output since April, also weighed on markets.

As did concerns about the upcoming so-called fiscal cliff in the US, now that the US election has been won by Barack Obama.

“Having been fixated on the US election and the preferred market outcome of an Obama victory, the initial morning feel good bounce [has fizzled out], as markets quickly moved on to the next potential banana skin,” said Michael Hewson at CMC Markets.

“In this case there are several, starting with today’s Greek parliamentary vote on austerity, not to mention concerns about how the newly elected president will deal with the US fiscal cliff concerns.”

Under current plans, $ 600bn (£375bn) of tax rises and spending cuts will kick in in January, with many analysts saying this will push the US economy back into recession.

Weak demand

In the spring, the Commission forecast that the 27 members of the EU would collectively produce no economic growth in 2012. It now forecasts the EU economy will shrink by 0.3%. It also downgraded its forecast for the eurozone economy this year, from a contraction of 0.3% to 0.4%.

The revisions to next year’s forecasts were more stark. While the eurozone is barely expected to grow at all, the EU is now forecast to grow by 0.4% compared with the previous estimate of 1.3%.

The Commission made a number of drastic cuts in its forecasts for growth for 2013, and none more so than Greece, which it now expects to contract by 4.2%, having forecast flat growth in the spring. It expects Greece and Spain to return to growth in 2014.

The UK is now expected to grow by 0.9% next year, and Germany 0.8%, having both been forecast to grow 1.7% previously.

The Commission also said it expects the UK government’s budget deficit – the amount by which its annual spending exceeds its income – to grow to 7.2% in 2013 from 6.2% this year, making it the highest in the EU apart from the Republic of Ireland.

Unemployment in the eurozone currently stands at 11.6%, and the Commission said it would peak at 12% next year. Domestic demand, it said, would remain weak next year before picking up in 2014.

“Major policy decisions have laid the foundation for strengthening confidence,” said the Commission’s vice-president for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Olli Rehn.

“Market stress has been reduced, but there is no room for complacency.”

	Q3 2011	Q4 2011	Q1 2012	Q2 2012
Source: Eurostat figures showing % change compared with previous quarter
Eurozone	0.1	-0.3	0	-0.2
Germany	0.4	-0.1	0.5	0.3
France	0.2	0.0	0.0	0.0
Italy	-0.2	-0.7	-0.8	-0.8
Spain	0	-0.5	-0.3	-0.4
Netherlands	-0.3	-0.6	0.2	0.2
Portugal	-0.6	-1.4	-0.1	-1.2
Cyprus	-1.0	-0.3	-0.4	-0.7

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Merkel says Germany, Britain must work together on EU

LONDON (Reuters) – Germany and Britain must cooperate to work round their differences on the European Union‘s long-term spending plans, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.

“Despite differences that we have it is very important for me that the UK and Germany work together,” Merkel said through a translator before a meeting in London with Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss the EU‘s 2014-2020 budget.

“We always have to do something that will stand up to public opinion back home. Not all of the expenditure that has been earmarked has been used with great efficiency … We need to address that,” she said.

EU leaders meet in Brussels on November 22-23 to try to secure a seven-year budget for the 27-nation bloc amid signs of differences of opinion over what action should be taken.

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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Election night TV audience down from 2008: Nielsen data

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Tuesday’s presidential election may have been too close to call for weeks, but it didn’t pull in as many TV viewers as four years ago.

More than 66.8 million Americans watched coverage of the 2012 elections during prime time on Tuesday, according to final Nielsen data on Wednesday. That’s down from the 71.5 million who tuned in to see the United States elect Barack Obama as its first African-American president in November 2008.

Nielsen said 13 cable and broadcast television networks aired live coverage of the election results, which saw Obama defeat Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Americans aged 55 and older made up the biggest audience, according to the ratings data.

The viewers for election night were also slightly down on the 67.2 million people who watched October’s first presidential debate between Romney and Obama.

But activity on social media soared to a record level. More than 31 million, election-related tweets were sent on Tuesday night – including a couple from Obama proclaiming his victory – making the night “the most Tweeted about event in U.S. political history,” according to Twitter.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Paul Simao)

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Death of the cassette tape much exaggerated

LONDON (Reuters) – The widening gap between the amount of data the world produces and our capacity to store it is giving a new lease of life to the humble cassette tape.

Although consumers have abandoned the audio cassette in favor of the ubiquitous iPod, organizations with large amounts of data, from patient records to capacity-hungry video archives, have continued to use tape as a cheap and secure storage medium.

Researchers at IBM are trying to keep this 60-year old technology relevant for at least the next decade and they are getting help from rising energy costs, which are forcing companies to look for cheaper alternatives to stacks of power-hungry hard drives.

Evangelos Eleftheriou and his colleagues at IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland, have developed a cassette just 10 cm by 10cm by 2cm that can hold about 35 terabytes of data, the equivalent of a library with 400 kilometers of bookshelves.

“It is really the greenest storage technology,” Eleftheriou told Reuters. “Tape at rest, consumes literally zero power.”

Unlike hard drive storage devices, which have to be on continuously, tape systems only consume power when data is being read or recorded, giving them a carbon footprint a fraction that of their disc-based counterparts.

Latency is the biggest disadvantage. Tapes have to be retrieved, usually by a robotic selector, and then loaded into a reading device.

But for much of the world’s archived data, access time is not critical. From legal archives and company records kept to comply with legislation like the Sarbanes Oxley Act in the United States, to data on traffic flow and weather patterns, keeping secure copies is more important than instant access.

“If you have big data then you have really big backups,” said Eleftheriou.

This is borne out by an estimate from consultancy Coughlin Associates that about 400 exabytes, equal to 20 million times the content of U.S. Library of Congress, is currently stored on tape.

The new IBM cassette, originally developed with Fuji Film, packs about 29.5 billion bits on a square inch of tape using a coating made from the chemical compound barium ferrite, which maximizes so-called linear density – the amount of data that can be squeezed onto a length of the tape.

The other limitation is the number of tracks that can be laid down and the researchers have developed novel nanopositioning technologies that can position the read and write heads with an accuracy of 10 to 15 billionths of a meter.

SERIOUSLY BIG DATA

Eleftheriou and his team believe they can increase the storage capacity to 100 billion bits per square inch and they hope this will make tape storage a contender for one of the world’s biggest data collection projects – the huge radio telescope known as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

In just over 10 years the SKA will start scanning the skies from two remote sites in South Africa and Australia, and it will generate 10 times the data traffic of the global internet.

“There’s going to be a lot of data pouring out of what is essentially a giant computer with a few bits of metal (the dishes and the antennae) on the ends,” said Andy Faulkner, an astrophysicist at Cambridge University and one of the project engineers on the SKA.

Faulkner said there has been quite a shift towards using hard drives in astronomy in recent years because their capacity has grown so far and fast, but the SKA will be a different kettle of fish, not least because of the vast amount of data it will generate and the restrictions on power usage from its remote location.

“In truth, nobody knows just yet what we will be using given the 10-year time frame but tape storage is very interesting because you don’t necessarily need real time access to everything.”

(Editing by Jon Hemming)

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Experts say psychological effects of Sandy likely to grow

Fairfield, Connecticut (Reuters) – The devastating winds and catastrophic flooding of Superstorm Sandy may have subsided, but psychological distress from the disaster and its patchy recovery is likely to be growing, trauma experts say.

Those most vulnerable to long-term emotional fallout from the storm are people who lost loved ones or whose homes were destroyed. But the disruption to normal life could well affect millions of others, experts say.

From New York City to commuter towns to Atlantic Ocean seaside resorts, daily routines have been turned upside down by power outages, fuel shortages, blocked roads, closed schools and canceled trains and buses.

Thousands of people are scrambling to find housing, and children missed as much as a week of school. Homeowners are relying on candles, flashlights and canned food as temperatures dip to wintry levels.

Elderly people have been trapped in high-rise apartments with no lights or working elevators, and sick people living alone have been unable to refill prescriptions.

In Fairfield, Connecticut, a waitress at a downtown cafe brought her elderly mother to work. “She has nowhere to go and can’t function alone in the dark,” said the frazzled waitress.

Such challenges are “the grinding, daily wear and stress of a natural disaster,” said George Bonanno, a clinical psychology professor who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder at Teachers College at Columbia University in New York.

Some people will develop anxiety, despair and relationship problems, he said, while others could over time see their immune systems compromised and get sick more easily.

Psychological research shows the leading impact of natural disasters is post-traumatic stress syndrome, characterized by nightmares, flashbacks or a sense of detachment, along with depression and other anxiety disorders.

Among those particularly at risk are people who feel they have little control over their lives or have a fatalistic world view, according to research.

“You definitely worry about folks getting depressed, hopeless, feeling they don’t have control,” said David Yusko, assistant clinical director at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania.

Many people may experience sleep problems, panic attacks, rapid heartbeats and gastro-intestinal distress, he said.

That sense of control is key, said Scott Feldman, a social worker who recounted helping a young displaced mother on New York‘s Staten Island, which was devastated by the storm.

The woman, with one baby 18 months old and a second just seven weeks old, called the delivery at a shelter of some special baby formula a miracle, he said.

Feldman reminded her that, rather than it being a miracle, she had advocated for her children, let neighbors know what she needed and was part of a community.

“It gave her more of a sense of control over her life, and that’s really important,” Feldman said.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Todd Eastham)

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