Wii U finally gets Nintendo’s TVii service on December 20th

After a month-long delay, Nintendo (NTDOY) will launch its Nintendo TVii service for the Wii U on December 20th in the U.S. and Canada. Nintendo TVii is the company’s take on organizing all of the various video streaming and DVR services a user might subscribe to and then displaying them in an easy-to-navigate touchscreen-based interface on the Wii U GamePad. With Nintendo TVii, Nintendo hopes to make content discovery an easier task, rather than a chore. At the same time, Nintendo TVii will offer new “second-screen” experiences (similar to Xbox SmartGlass) with built-in social sharing options to Facebook (FB), Twitter and the Wii U console’s Miiverse.

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Nintendo TVii will support Amazon (AMZN) Instant Video, Hulu Plus and cable and satellite providers on Thursday, but Netflix (NFLX) and TiVo (TIVO) support won’t hit the U.S. until “early 2013.” Nintendo didn’t state when TVii support for the latter two will hit Canada.

For the consumer’s sake, we hope the download for Nintendo TVii doesn’t take as long as past system updates.

Nintendo’s press release follows below.

Nintendo Makes TV Smart and Social – Nintendo TVii Launches Dec. 20

New Wii U Service Gives Every Member of the Family His or Her Own Personalized, Easy-to-Use Second-Screen Viewing Experience

REDMOND, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The company that changed how we play is about to change how we watch. On Dec. 20, Nintendo will introduce Nintendo TVii, a free, integrated service for the recently launched Wii U console that combines what you watch and how you watch into one seamless, second-screen experience on the revolutionary new Wii U GamePad controller.

The rapid increase in both the quality and availability of video entertainment content – hundreds of satellite and cable channels, a seemingly endless amount of video-on-demand options – has made finding something to watch a complex and occasionally frustrating process. The solution to this problem is coming from perhaps an unexpected place: a video game console.

“After Dec. 20, you’ll never look at your TV the same way again,” said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. “Wii U owners have already experienced the transformative effect that the GamePad has on game play and social interaction. Nintendo TVii shows how the integrated second screen of the GamePad can also transform and enhance the TV viewing experience. Welcome to the new world of TVii.”

Nintendo TVii maximizes Wii U owners’ current cable, satellite and video-on-demand services by pulling all of their available content sources – such as a Comcast cable package or Hulu Plus subscription – into one place. This empowers Wii U owners to focus on whatthey want to watch and not how they want to watch. And once users find the show, sporting event or movie they want, they press an icon and Nintendo TVii does the rest.

In addition to greatly simplifying finding and watching video content, Nintendo TVii also includes a series of social features that enable Wii U owners to share experiences and exciting moments with friends as they are happening on live TV. People can engage with others by commenting and sharing on Miiverse, Facebook and Twitter. Or they can comment, post or tweet about an incredible touchdown, a remarkable performance or a shocking plot twist, all using the personal screen of the Wii U GamePad.

Nintendo TVii requires no additional equipment and can be enjoyed with very little setup, demonstrating what’s possible when the second screen is truly integrated with the TV. Wii U owners can also discover more information about what they’re watching by easily accessing information on the GamePad via an Internet connection, including cast details, movie reviews from Rotten Tomatoes and sports data such as live stats and scores.

Nintendo TVii launches in the United States and Canada on Dec. 20. At launch, the service will support cable and satellite providers in both regions, as well as direct integration with Amazon Instant Video and Hulu Plus subscriptions in the United States. Further integration with Netflix subscriptions and TiVo are expected in early 2013 in the United States. Wii U owners with a Netflix subscription can still access the Netflix application from the Wii U system’s main menu and enjoy their favorite content accordingly.

All elements of the Nintendo TVii service are included in the purchase price of the Wii U system. Users will define which services they currently subscribe to – including the channel lineup in their cable package and video-on-demand service subscriptions – as part of the setup process.

Nintendo TVii observes the Wii U system parental controls, and additional options specific to the Nintendo TVii features can be chosen in the Nintendo TVii settings. Every member of the family can create a different viewing profile. For more information about this and other features, visit http://www.nintendo.com/wiiu.

This article was originally published by BGR

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NBC’s Engel, TV crew escape abduction in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — NBC‘s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said Tuesday he and members of his network crew escaped unharmed after five days of captivity in Syria, where more than a dozen pro-regime gunmen dragged them from their car, killed one of their rebel escorts and subjected them to mock executions.

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, an unshaven Engel said he and his team escaped during a firefight Monday night between their captors and rebels at a checkpoint. They crossed into Turkey on Tuesday.

NBC did not say how many people were kidnapped with Engel, although two other men, producer Ghazi Balkiz and photographer John Kooistra, appeared with him on the “Today” show. It was not confirmed whether everyone was accounted for.

Engel said he believes the kidnappers were a Shiite militia group loyal to the Syrian government, which has lost control over swaths of the country’s north and is increasingly on the defensive in a civil war that has killed 40,000 people since March 2011.

“They kept us blindfolded, bound,” said the 39-year-old Engel, who speaks and reads Arabic. “We weren’t physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings,” he added.

“They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government,” Engel said. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, but he did not elaborate.

There was no mention of the kidnapping by Syria’s state-run news agency.

Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, who used military force to crush mostly peaceful protests against his regime. The crackdown on protests led many in Syria to take up arms against the government, and the conflict has become a civil war.

Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels.

“They captured us in order to carry out this exchange,” he said.

Engel and his crew entered Syria on Thursday and were driving through what they thought was rebel-controlled territory when “a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road.”

“There were probably 15 gunmen. They were wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed. They dragged us out of the car,” he said.

He said the gunmen shot and killed at least one of their rebel escorts on the spot and took the hostages into a waiting truck nearby.

Around 11 p.m. Monday, Engel said he and the others were being moved to another location in northern Idlib province.

“And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn’t expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan,” he said. “The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them.”

Engel and his crew crossed back into neighboring Turkey on Tuesday.

The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.

NBC sought to keep the disappearance of Engel and the crew secret for several days while it investigated what happened to them. Major media organizations, including The Associated Press, adhered to a request from the network to refrain from reporting on the issue out of concern it could make the dangers to the captives worse. News of the disappearance did begin to leak out in Turkish media and on some websites on Monday.

Syria has become a danger zone for reporters since the conflict began.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is by far the deadliest country for the press in 2012, with 28 journalists killed in combat or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces.

Among the journalists killed while covering Syria are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain’s Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war in Syria. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers and travel with rebel escorts or drivers.

Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996.

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Live chat: Newtown rebuilds after shooting

In the aftermath of Friday's Newtown school shooting, we've heard tales mostly horrifying and occasionally heroic, from surviving witnesses and mourning citizens alike, but this one lies somewhere in between, all the more unshakeable. One six-year-old Sandy Hook student played dead in her first-grade classroom, her family pastor said late Sunday, with the kind of quick thinking that ended up saving her life but now leaves her with the unshakeable memories of watching all her classmates being shot and killed. ...

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Ben Stiller’s Red Hour sells two more comedies to ABC Studios

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Ben Stiller‘s Red Hour Television is continuing to pump out comedies for ABC Studios.

Following the sale of “Complikated” in October, the production company has sold network’s production division two new series – “You’re Not Doing It Right” and “Between Two Kings” – a rep for Red Hour told TheWrap on Monday.

Comedian Michael Ian Black writes, stars and produces in the former, a half-hour single-camera comedy based on his book of the same name that explores his childhood, marriage, children and career. Set “in the wilds of Connecticut,” the show takes a hard look at what happens when you wake up, look around and don’t recognize the life you’re living as your own, Red Hour said.

“Between Two Kings” is written and executive-produced by Jeff Kahn, who has written for series like “Drawn Together” and “The Ben Stiller Show.” It follows the hardships of a divorced father raising an 11-year-old son while living in his elderly father’s home.

Both are being executive-produced by Stiller, along with Red Hour’s Debbie Liebling and Stuart Cornfeld.

Since signing an overall deal with ABC Studios at the end of 2011, Red Hour also has sold “Please Knock,” written by Kevin Napier, and “The Notorious Mollie Flowers,” written by Adam Resnick.

The sale of “You’re Not Doing It Right” and “Between Two Kings” were first reported by Deadline.

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EU’s Almunia sets deadline for Google antitrust plan

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union set Google an ultimatum on Tuesday, giving it a month to come up with detailed proposals to resolve a two-year investigation into complaints that it used its power to block rivals, including Microsoft.

The EU’s antitrust chief, Joaquin Almunia, delivered the deadline in a meeting with Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt in Brussels.

If it fails to address the complaints, the world’s most popular search engine could face a lengthy battle with what is arguably the world’s most powerful antitrust authority. If found guilty, it could mean a fine of up to 10 percent of its revenue, or $ 4 billion.

“Since our preliminary talks with Google started in July, we have substantially reduced our differences regarding possible ways to address each of the four competition concerns expressed by the Commission,” Almunia said in a statement.

“On the basis of the progress made, I now expect Google to come forward with a detailed commitment text in January 2013.”

Almunia said he would seek feedback from rivals and users once he has received Google’s proposal.

Google said it continues to work co-operatively with the Commission.

The European Commission has been examining informal settlement proposals from Google since July but has not sought feedback from the complainants, suggesting it is not convinced by what Google has put on the table so far.

The EU watchdog’s two-year investigation has centered on complaints that Google unfairly favored its services over its rivals in search results, and that it may have copied material from travel and restaurant websites without permission.

The Commission is also looking into whether Google restricted advertisers from transferring their data to rivals.

The Commission’s decision to press Google to offer more far-reaching concessions comes in sharp contrast to the case U.S. regulators have against the company.

Sources told Reuters the U.S. Federal Trade Commission could drop their investigation into Google without requiring any major change in how the company does business.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Robin Emmott, Louise Heavens and Nick Zieminski)

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N. Korea displays Kim Jong Il a year after death

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea unveiled the embalmed body of Kim Jong Il, still in his trademark khaki jumpsuit, on the anniversary of his death Monday as mourning mixed with pride over a recent satellite launch that was a long-held goal of the late authoritarian leader.

Kim lies in state a few floors below his father, national founder Kim Il Sung, in the Kumsusan mausoleum, the cavernous former presidential palace. Kim Jong Il is presented lying beneath a red blanket, a spotlight shining on his face in a room suffused in red.

Wails echoed through the chilly hall as a group of North Korean women sobbed into the sashes of their traditional Korean dresses as they bowed before his body. The hall bearing the glass coffin was opened to select visitors — including The Associated Press — for the first time since his death.

North Korea also unveiled Kim’s yacht and his armored train carriage, where he is said to have died. Among the personal belongings featured in the mausoleum are the parka, sunglasses and pointy platform shoes he famously wore in the last decades of his life. A MacBook Pro lay open on his desk.

North Koreans paid homage to Kim and basked in the success of last week’s launch of a long-range rocket that sent a satellite named after him to space.

The launch, condemned in many other capitals as a violation of bans against developing its missile technology, was portrayed not only as a gift to Kim Jong Il but also as proof that his young son, Kim Jong Un, has the strength and vision to lead the country.

The elder Kim died last Dec. 17 from a heart attack while traveling on his train. His death was followed by scenes of North Koreans dramatically wailing in the streets of Pyongyang, and of the 20-something son leading ranks of uniformed and gray-haired officials through funeral and mourning rites.

The mood in the capital was decidedly more upbeat a year later, with some of the euphoria carrying over from last Wednesday’s launch. The satellite bears one of Kim Jong Il’s nicknames, Kwangmyongsong, or “Lode Star,” a moniker given to him at birth according to the official lore.

Cameras were not allowed inside the mausoleum, and state media did not release any images of Kim Jong Il’s body.

With the death anniversary came a hint that Kim Jong Un himself might soon be a father.

His wife, Ri Sol Ju, was seen on state TV with what appeared to be a baby bump as she walked slowly next to her husband at the mausoleum, where they bowed to statues of Kim’s father and grandfather.

There is no official word from Pyongyang about a pregnancy. In addition, Ri is shown wearing a billowing traditional Korean dress in black that makes it difficult to know for sure.

North Koreans are reluctant to discuss details of the Kim family that have not been released by the state. Still there are rumors even in Pyongyang about whether the country’s first couple is expecting.

To honor Kim’s father, North Koreans stopped in their tracks at midday and bowed their heads as the national flag fluttered at half-staff along streets and from buildings.

Pyongyang construction workers took off their yellow hard hats and bowed at the waist as sirens wailed across the city for three minutes.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans gathered in the frigid plaza outside, newly transformed into a public park with lawns and pergolas. Geese flew past snow-tinged firs and swans dallied in the partly frozen moat that rings the vast complex in Pyongyang’s outskirts.

“Just when we were thinking how best to uphold our general, he passed away,” Kim Jong Ran said at the plaza. “But we upheld leader Kim Jong Un. … We regained our strength and we are filled with determination to work harder for our country.”

Speaking outside the mausoleum, renamed the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the military’s top political officer, Choe Ryong Hae, said North Korea should be proud of the satellite, calling it “a political event with great significance in the history of Korea and humanity.”

Much of the rest of the world, however, was swift in condemning the launch, which was seen by the United States and other nations as a thinly disguised cover for testing missile technology that could someday be used for a nuclear warhead.

The test, which the U.N. Security Council said violated a ban on launches using ballistic missile technology, underlined Kim Jong Un’s determination to continue carrying out his father’s hardline policies even if they draw international condemnation.

Washington said Monday it has no option but to seek to isolate Pyongyang further.

“What’s left to us is to continue to increase pressure on the North Korean regime and we are looking at how to best to do that, both bilaterally and with our partners going forward until they (North Korea) get the message. We are going to further isolate this regime,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Some outside experts worry that Pyongyang’s next move will be to press ahead with a nuclear test in the coming weeks, a step toward building a warhead small enough to be carried by a long-range missile.

Despite inviting further isolation for his impoverished nation and the threat of stiffer sanctions, Kim Jong Un won national prestige and clout by going ahead with the rocket launch.

At a memorial service on Sunday, North Korea’s top leadership not only eulogized Kim Jong Il, but also praised his son. Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of North Korea’s parliament, called the launch a “shining victory” and an emblem of the promise that lies ahead with Kim Jong Un in power.

The rocket’s success also fits neatly into the narrative of Kim Jong Il’s death. Even before he died, the father had laid the groundwork for his son to inherit a government focused on science, technology and improving the economy. And his pursuit of nuclear weapons and the policy of putting the military ahead of all other national concerns have also carried into Kim Jong Un’s reign.

In a sign of the rocket launch’s importance, Kim Jong Un invited the scientists in charge of it to attend the mourning rites in Pyongyang, according to state media.

The reopening of the mausoleum on the anniversary of the leader’s death follows tradition. Kumsusan, the palace where his father, Kim Il Sung, served as president, was reopened as a mausoleum on the anniversary of his death in 1994.

___

Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report. Follow Jean Lee, AP’s bureau chief for Pyongyang and Seoul, at www.twitter.com/newsjean.

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Global malaria battle stalls as financing gets tight

LONDON (Reuters) – Global funding for the fight against malaria has stalled in the past two years, threatening to reverse what the World Health Organisation (WHO) says are “remarkable recent gains” in the battle to control one of the world’s leading infectious killers.

After rapid expansion between 2004 and 2009, funding for malaria prevention and control leveled off between 2010 and 2012 – meaning there were fewer life-saving steps taken in hard- hit malarial regions such as sub-Saharan Africa.

“If we don’t scale up vector control activities in 2013 we can expect major resurgences of malaria,” said Richard Cibulskis, lead author of the WHO’s World Malaria Report, which was published on Monday.

“Vector control” means stopping transmission of the disease with tools such as treated mosquito nets. The report found that deliveries of such nets to endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa dropped from 145 million in 2010 to an estimated 66 million in 2012.

“This means that many households will be unable to replace existing bed nets when required, exposing more people to the potentially deadly disease,” the report said.

Malaria is caused by a parasite carried in the saliva of mosquitoes and kills hundreds of thousands of people a year, mainly babies and children under the age of five in Africa.

According to WHO data, the disease infected around 219 million people in 2010, killing around 660,000 of them. Robust figures are, however, hard to establish and other health experts say the annual malaria death toll could be double that.

GLOBAL TARGETS

An estimated $ 5.1 billion a year is needed between 2011 and 2020 to get malaria medicines, prevention measures and tests to all those who need them in the 99 countries which have on-going transmission of the disease.

“Essentially, with the tools that we’ve got, we need to make sure that we continue the investments in the control measures that we have,” Cibulskis told a news conference in Geneva.

“If we don’t do that, malaria will bounce back. As soon as you take bed nets away, malaria will come back. If you stop indoor residual spraying, it will come back, and with a vengeance. So yes, we need to keep on investing in malaria ultimately until new tools are developed.”

The WHO says while many countries have increased financing for malaria, the total available global funding remained at $ 2.3 billion in 2011 – less than half of what is needed.

“Global targets for reducing the malaria burden will not be reached unless progress is accelerated in the highest burden countries,” Robert Newman, director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme, said in statement with the report.

“These countries are in a precarious situation and most of them need urgent financial assistance to procure and distribute life-saving commodities.”

The WHO report found that by far the greatest impact of malaria is concentrated in 14 endemic countries which account for an estimated 80 percent of malaria deaths.

Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are the most affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa, while India is the hardest hit in South East Asia.

WHO director general Margaret Chan wrote in a forward to the report that there is now an urgent need to identify new sources of funding to boost and sustain malaria control.

“We also need to examine new ways to make existing funds stretch further by increasing the value for money of malaria commodities and the efficiency of service delivery,” she said.

The Roll Back Malaria Partnership, which includes the WHO, UNICEF and the World Bank, said it was already exploring several options, including financial transaction taxes, airline ticket taxes and a potential “malaria bond” to encourage more involvement from private sector investors.

Fatoumata Nafo-Traore, executive director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, said Mozambique and one other African country were preparing to pilot such a bond in 2013, with the hope that other countries would follow their example.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Stephen Powell)

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Why we should politicize the Newtown shooting, starting right now

By Jeff Greenfield

Two events, each more than a century old, instruct us about how we should act in the face of what happened Friday in Newtown, Conn.

On March 25, 1911, fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in lower Manhattan. Because the owners had locked the doors and stairwells, in an effort to prevent theft and unauthorized work breaks, the garment workers were trapped in the fire; 146 of them, almost all young female immigrants, died.

In the wake of the disaster, New York politicians–including future Gov. Al Smith and future Sen. Robert Wagner–“exploited the tragedy.” How? By helping push through a series of reforms that made New York state a model of workplace safety.

Little more than a year later, on April 15, 1912, the unsinkable ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, taking 1,522 passengers and crew members to their deaths. After the disaster, regulators and public officials “exploited the tragedy.” How? By insisting that ships carry enough lifeboats for all passengers (the Titanic, operating under then-current rules, had barely enough for half); by insisting that ships man their radios 24 hours a day; by better designs of hulls and bulkheads.

A shocking event is exactly the right time to start, or restart, an argument about public policy. A story like the Newtown killings rivets our attention, forces it to the front of our consciousness, insists that we sweep aside the thousand and one distractions that compete for our brain space, and demands that we ask: Is this how we want things to be, and, if not, what do we do about it?

Consider a more recent example. On March 7, 1965, voting rights demonstrators on a march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery were met by a phalanx of state troopers at the Edmund Pettis Bridge. They met the marchers with fists and billy clubs. A week later, President Lyndon B. Johnson spoke to a joint session of Congress. He made no apologies for “politicizing the tragedy.” Instead, he said:

“At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Ala.”

The speech—which borrowed the famous assertion that “we shall overcome”—propelled the Voting Rights Act into reality and effectively ended 100 years of state-sanctioned repression.

What those images from Selma did—as the images of police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham had done in May of 1963—was to make real what for most of us had been an abstraction. The images said, This is what it means to be black in Alabama and seek the most elemental of civil rights.

What happened in Newtown, I think, was very much the same story. The day after the shooting, I was with my grandson at his elementary school’s book fair; I would wager that every parent, every teacher, every school staff member there looked at the kids, with their painted faces and their fists filled with cookies, and thought: This could happen to them. Those same thoughts were going through the minds of every parent dropping a child off at school on Monday, I imagine.

This is why the words of President Barack Obama on Sunday struck such a responsive chord. But it must not be forgotten that in the days, months and years before Newtown, the president has been something less than a profile in courage on the gun question. His response to a question on assault weapons during October’s town hall debate with Mitt Romney is best described as craven: “What I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally,” Obama said in part. “Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced. But part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence.”

You can understand the thinking: I can’t get a bill through Congress, it’s a waste of political capital, there are lots of Democrats who hunt and shoot in Ohio. But it does not change the fact that the triumph of the gun lobby has been a bipartisan affair. To be fair, Republicans have been at the forefront of a never-ending effort at the state and federal level to permit guns of all sorts at all sort of venues, from schools to national parks. Before Newtown, it was only a matter of time before some zealot proposed letting citizens purchase Predator drones with Hellfire missiles.

The culture of hunting, and the legitimate case for self-protection, have too often been brushed aside by advocates of restricting gun ownership. But when a Second Amendment stalwart like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia endorses a national commission on gun violence and tweets, "This awful massacre has changed where we go from here. Our conversation should move beyond dialogue," you know the Newtown murders can act as a hinge moment.

Newtown forces us to look at the consequences of decisions–or indecision–squarely, unflinchingly. It forces us to ask ourselves, “What do we do in the face of this new evidence?” That is as far from exploitation as you can get.

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TV network aimed at millennials set for summer

NEW YORK (AP) — Participant Media plans to launch a cable network aimed at viewers 18 to 34 years old with programming it describes as inspiring and thought-provoking.

The as-yet-unnamed network is set to start next summer with an initial reach of 40 million subscribers, the company announced Monday.

Targeting so-called millennials, Participant is developing a program slate with such producers as Brian Graden, Morgan Spurlock and Brian Henson of The Jim Henson Company.

Evan Shapiro, who joined Participant in May after serving as President of IFC and Sundance Channel, will head the new network.

Parent company Participant Media has produced a number of fiction and nonfiction films including “Charlie Wilson’s War,” ”An Inconvenient Truth” and Steven Spielberg’s current biopic “Lincoln.”

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Massachusetts fines Morgan Stanley over Facebook research

BOSTON (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for Facebook Inc’s initial public offering, will pay a $ 5 million fine to Massachusetts to settle charges that its bankers improperly influenced its research analysts when the Internet company went public.

Massachusetts’ top securities regulator, William Galvin, charged that Morgan Stanley improperly helped Facebook disclose sensitive financial information selectively, perpetuating what he calls “an unlevel playing field” between Wall Street and Main Street.

Morgan Stanley has been under criticism since the social media company went public in May for having revealed revised earnings and revenue forecasts to select clients on conference calls before the media company’s $ 16 billion initial public offering. A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Galvin, who has been aggressive in policing how research is distributed on Wall Street ever since investment banks reached a global settlement in 2003, said the bank violated that settlement. He fined Citigroup $ 2 million over similar charges in late October.

Massachusetts says that a senior Morgan Stanley banker helped a Facebook executive release new information and then guided the executive on how to speak with Wall Street analysts about it. The banker, Galvin’s office said, rehearsed with Facebook’s Treasurer and wrote the bulk of the script Facebook’s Treasurer used when calling the research analysts.

The banker “was not allowed to call research analysts himself, so he did everything he could to ensure research analysts received new revenue numbers which they then provided to institutional investors,” Galvin said in a statement.

Retail investors were not given any similar information, Galvin said, saying this case illustrates how institutional investors often have an edge over retail investors.

(Reporting By Svea Herbst-Bayliss with additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn in New York; Editing by Theodore d’Afflisio)

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