Black Friday sales slip as shoppers opt for Thursday ‘doorbusters’

Security guards break up a fight between shoppers outside a Bowling Green, Ky., Target, Nov. 22, 2012. (AP)

Black Friday, the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season, saw more foot traffic than ever before, according to estimates. But it appears so-called "doorbuster" deals offered the day before dinged sales.

According to ShopperTrak, which tracks retail foot traffic, there were more than 307 million store visits on Friday, up 3.5 percent. But Black Friday shoppers spent an estimated $11.2 billion, down 1.8 percent over 2011, when consumers spent $11.4 billion.

And for once, the sluggish economy is not to blame.

"It is all Black Thursday's fault," ZeroHedge.com said.

[Slideshow: Black Friday madness]

Shopping malls were "less hectic" on Black Friday this year, Bloomberg.com reported, as retailers "have turned Black Friday, once a one-day event after Thanksgiving, into a week's worth of deals and discounts."

And Thursday's deals "attracted some of the spending that's usually meant for Friday," ShopperTrak said.

Big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target were open on Thanksgiving night, drawing crowds that were--in some cases--rowdy. (Thankfully, it was nothing like the dystopian version of shopping hell recently envisioned by "Saturday Night Live.")

Another reason for the Black Friday dip: people skipped lines and shopped online. According to comScore, Black Friday online sales topped $1 billion for the first time, jumping 26 percent to $1.04 billion, compared to $816 million last year.

And according to IBM Benchmark, online sales rose 17 percent on Thanksgiving and 21 percent on Black Friday.

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Egypt’s Mursi faces judicial revolt over decree

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi faced a rebellion from judges who accused him on Saturday of expanding his powers at their expense, deepening a crisis that has triggered violence in the street and exposed the country’s deep divisions.

The Judges’ Club, a body representing judges across Egypt, called for a strike during a meeting interrupted with chants demanding the “downfall of the regime” – the rallying cry in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year.

Mursi’s political opponents and supporters, representing the divide between newly empowered Islamists and their critics, called for rival demonstrations on Tuesday over a decree that has triggered concern in the West.

Issued late on Thursday, it marks an effort by Mursi to consolidate his influence after he successfully sidelined Mubarak-era generals in August. The decree defends from judicial review decisions taken by Mursi until a new parliament is elected in a vote expected early next year.

It also shields the Islamist-dominated assembly writing Egypt’s new constitution from a raft of legal challenges that have threatened the body with dissolution, and offers the same protection to the Islamist-controlled upper house of parliament.

Egypt’s highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council, said the decree was an “unprecedented attack” on the independence of the judiciary. The Judges’ Club, meeting in Cairo, called on Mursi to rescind it.

That demand was echoed by prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei. “There is no room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent measures and then says ‘let us split the difference’,” he said.

“I am waiting to see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S., by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity,” he said in an interview with Reuters and the Associated Press.

More than 300 people were injured on Friday as protests against the decree turned violent. There were attacks on at least three offices belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mursi to power.

POLARISATION

Liberal, leftist and socialist parties called a big protest for Tuesday to force Mursi to row back on a move they say has exposed the autocratic impulses of a man once jailed by Mubarak.

In a sign of the polarization in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood called its own protests that day to support the president’s decree.

Mursi also assigned himself new authority to sack the prosecutor general, who was appointed during the Mubarak era, and appoint a new one. The dismissed prosecutor general, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, was given a hero’s welcome at the Judges’ Club.

In open defiance of Mursi, Ahmed al-Zind, head of the club, introduced Mahmoud by his old title.

The Mursi administration has defended the decree on the grounds that it aims to speed up a protracted transition from Mubarak’s rule to a new system of democratic government.

Analysts say it reflects the Brotherhood’s suspicion towards sections of a judiciary unreformed from Mubarak’s days.

“It aims to sideline Mursi’s enemies in the judiciary and ultimately to impose and head off any legal challenges to the constitution,” said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with The European Council on Foreign Relations.

“We are in a situation now where both sides are escalating and its getting harder and harder to see how either side can gracefully climb down.”

ADVISOR TO MURSI QUITS

Following a day of violence in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez, the smell of tear gas hung over the capital’s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the uprising that toppled Mubarak in 2011 and the stage for more protests on Friday.

Youths clashed sporadically with police near the square, where activists camped out for a second day on Saturday, setting up makeshift barricades to keep out traffic.

Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt’s most widely read dailies, hailed Friday’s protest as “The November 23 Intifada”, invoking the Arabic word for uprising.

But the ultra-orthodox Salafi Islamist groups that have been pushing for tighter application of Islamic law in the new constitution have rallied behind Mursi’s decree.

The Nour Party, one such group, stated its support for the Mursi decree. Al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, which carried arms against the state in the 1990s, said it would save the revolution from what it described as remnants of the Mubarak regime.

Samir Morkos, a Christian assistant to Mursi, had told the president he wanted to resign, said Yasser Ali, Mursi’s spokesman. Speaking to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Morkos said: “I refuse to continue in the shadow of republican decisions that obstruct the democratic transition”.

Mursi’s decree has been criticized by Western states that earlier this week were full of praise for his role in mediating an end to the eight-day war between Israel and Palestinians.

“The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns for many Egyptians and for the international community,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

The European Union urged Mursi to respect the democratic process.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy, Marwa Awad, Edmund Blair and Shaimaa Fayed and Reuters TV; Editing by Jon Hemming)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video becomes YouTube’s most viewed

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – South Korean rap star Psy‘s music video “Gangnam Style” on Saturday became the most watched item ever posted to YouTube with more than 800 million views, edging past Canadian teen star Justin Bieber‘s 2-year-old video for his song “Baby.”

The milestone was the latest pop culture victory for Psy, 34, a portly rap singer known for his slicked-back hair and comic dance style who has become one of the most unlikely global stars of 2012.

Psy succeeded with a video that generated countless parodies and became a media sensation. He gained more fame outside his native country than the more polished singers in South Korea‘s so-called K-Pop style who have sought to win international audiences.

YouTube, in a post on its Trends blog, said “Gangnam Style” on Saturday surpassed the site’s previous record holder, Bieber’s 2010 music video “Baby,” and by mid-day “Gangnam Style” had reached 805 million views, compared to 803 million for “Baby.” Within a few hours, “Gangnam Style” had gone up to more than 809 million views.

“Gangnam Style” was first posted to YouTube in July, and by the following month it began to show huge popularity on YouTube with audiences outside of South Korea.

“It’s been a massive hit at a global level unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” said the YouTube blog.

The blog also said the “velocity” of the video’s popularity has been unprecedented for YouTube.

In his “Gangnam Style” video the outlandishly dressed, sunglass-wearing Psy raps in Korean and dances in the style of an upper-crust person riding an invisible horse.

The song is named after the affluent Gangnam District of Seoul and it mocks the rampant consumerism of that suburb. Psy, whose real name is Park Jai-sang, is no stranger to wealth as his father is chairman of a South Korean semiconductor company.

His parents sent him to business school in the United States but he confesses that he bought musical instruments with his tuition money. He later graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and won fame in South Korea with his 2001 debut album.

The viral success of “Gangnam Style” on YouTube also has translated into strong record sales. In late September, the song jumped to the top of the British pop charts and it also has sold well in other countries.

Popular parodies of the “Gangnam Style” video included one featuring the University of Oregon’s duck mascot, and another done in the “Star Trek” language Klingon.

The official YouTube view count for Gangnam Style represents only the figure for the original video posted to the site, but copycat versions, parodies and videos by people commenting on the song have been posted to the site and elsewhere on the Web.

Counting all those different versions, “Gangnam Style” and its related videos have more than 2.2 billion views across the Internet, said Matt Fiorentino, spokesman for the online video tracking firm Visible Measures.

“Without the dance, I don’t think it would have been as big as it is,” Fiorentino said. “And the other thing is, Psy has a unique sense of humor which comes through in the video. He doesn’t take himself too seriously.”

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Bill Trott)

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German research points way to faster flu vaccines

LONDON (Reuters) – An experimental vaccine based on a molecule related to DNA protects animals against influenza and may one day offer an ultra-rapid way to develop new shots for humans, German scientists reported on Sunday.

Assuming it also works in people, the new approach could allow commercial flu vaccines to be designed and manufactured in weeks rather than months.

Making vaccines quickly is critical in fighting flu, particularly during a pandemic when health authorities and drugmakers are in a race to keep up with mutating strains of virus.

Flu vaccines have traditionally been produced in chicken eggs, a tricky and lengthy process. More recently some firms have started using animal cell cultures, with Novartis on November 20 winning the first U.S. approval for such a product.

Both approaches, however, still involve virus cultivation, which can result in variable yields and production delays.

The new vaccine developed by Lothar Stitz of Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut and colleagues uses a quicker approach. It is made solely of messenger RNA (mRNA) – a single-stranded molecule that carries information telling cells which proteins to make.

“The only thing we need is the sequence of the relevant genes,” Stitz said. “It’s a new option and it doesn’t take long to do.”

His team vaccinated mice, ferrets and pigs with an mRNA vaccine and found that the immune response was similar or better than that found with conventional vaccines. What is more, the new vaccines showed high efficacy in very young and very old animals, which can be a problem with current flu shots.

Reporting their results in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the scientists calculated that a completed vaccine could be produced within six to eight weeks of the genetic code of a flu virus strain being published.

In contrast growing vaccines in fertilised chicken eggs can take up to six months, while using cell cultures may reduce that by up to eight to 10 weeks.

Another potential advantage of mRNA vaccines is the fact that they do not need to be refrigerated.

A human vaccine based on the research is still years away, since extensive clinical trials will be needed to test safety and efficacy, and the job of taking the work forward now rests with CureVac, a privately owned biotech company.

CureVac, backed by billionaire German investor and business software firm SAP’s co-founder Dietmar Hopp, is already developing a therapeutic mRNA vaccine for prostate cancer in human trials.

The firm also has a vaccine for lung cancer in development and is working on prophylactic vaccines against several unnamed infectious diseases in a collaboration with Sanofi.

Sanofi is a major supplier of flu vaccines, along with Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline.

(Editing by Greg Mahlich)

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Saudi telco regulator suspends Mobily prepaid sim sales

(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia‘s No.2 telecom operator Etihad Etisalat Co (Mobily) has been suspended from selling pre-paid sim cards by the industry regulator, the firm said in a statement to the kingdom’s bourse on Sunday.

Mobily’s sales of pre-paid, or pay-as-you-go, sim cards will remain halted until the company “fully meets the prepaid service provisioning requirements,” the telco said in the statement.

These requirements include a September order from regulator, Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC). This states all pre-paid sim users must enter a personal identification number when recharging their accounts and that this number must be the same as the one registered with their mobile operator when the sim card was bought, according to a statement on the CITC website.

This measure is designed to ensure customer account details are kept up to date, the CITC said.

Mobily said the financial impact of the CITC’s decision would be “insignificant”, claiming data, corporate and postpaid revenues would meet its main growth drivers.

The firm, which competes with Saudi Telecom Co (STC) and Zain Saudi, reported a 23 percent rise in third-quarter profit in October, beating forecasts.

Prepaid mobile subscriptions are typically more popular among middle and lower income groups, with telecom operators pushing customers to shift to monthly contracts that include a data allowance.

Customers on monthly, or postpaid, contracts are also less likely to switch provider, but the bulk of customers remain on pre-paid accounts.

Mobily shares were trading down 1.4 percent at 0820 GMT on the Saudi bourse.

(Reporting by Matt Smith; Editing by Dinesh Nair)

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Egypt reformist warns of turmoil from Morsi decree

CAIRO (AP) — Prominent Egyptian democracy advocate Mohammed ElBaradei warned Saturday of increasing turmoil that could potentially lead to the military stepping in unless the Islamist president rescinds his new, near absolute powers, as the country’s long fragmented opposition sought to unite and rally new protests.

Egypt‘s liberal and secular forces — long divided, weakened and uncertain amid the rise of Islamist parties to power — are seeking to rally themselves in response to the decrees issued this week by President Mohammed Morsi. The president granted himself sweeping powers to “protect the revolution” and made himself immune to judicial oversight.

The judiciary, which was the main target of Morsi’s edicts, pushed back Saturday. The country’s highest body of judges, the Supreme Judical Council, called his decrees an “unprecedented assault.” Courts in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria announced a work suspension until the decrees are lifted.

Outside the high court building in Cairo, several hundred demonstrators rallied against Morsi, chanting, “Leave! Leave!” echoing the slogan used against former leader Hosni Mubarak in last year’s uprising that ousted him. Police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of young men who were shooting flares outside the court.

The edicts issued Wednesday have galvanized anger brewing against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, from which he hails, ever since he took office in June as Egypt’s first freely elected president. Critics accuse the Brotherhood — which has dominated elections the past year — and other Islamists of monopolizing power and doing little to bring real reform or address Egypt’s mounting economic and security woes.

Oppositon groups have called for new nationwide rallies Tuesday — and the Muslim Brotherhood has called for rallies supporting Morsi the same day, setting the stage for new violence.

Morsi supporters counter that the edicts were necessary to prevent the courts, which already dissolved the elected lower house of parliament, from further holding up moves to stability by disbanding the assembly writing the new constitution, as judges were considering doing. Like parliament was, the assembly is dominated by Islamists. Morsi accuses Mubarak loyalists in the judiciary of seeking to thwart the revolution’s goals and barred the judiciary from disbanding the constitutional assembly or parliament’s upper house.

In an interview with a handful of journalists, including The Associated Press, Nobel Peace laureate ElBaradei raised alarm over the impact of Morsi’s rulings, saying he had become “a new pharaoh.”

“There is a good deal of anger, chaos, confusion. Violence is spreading to many places and state authority is starting to erode slowly,” he said. “We hope that we can manage to do a smooth transition without plunging the country into a cycle of violence. But I don’t see this happening without Mr. Morsi rescinding all of this.”

Speaking of Egypt’s powerful military, ElBaradei said, “I am sure they are as worried as everyone else. You cannot exclude that the army will intervene to restore law and order” if the situation gets out of hand.

But anti-Morsi factions are chronically divided, with revolutionary youth activists, new liberal political parties that have struggled to build a public base and figures from the Mubarak era, all of whom distrust each other. The judiciary is also an uncomfortable cause for some to back, since it includes many Mubarak appointees who even Morsi opponents criticize as too tied to the old regime.

Opponents say the edicts gave Morsi near dictatorial powers, neutering the judiciary when he already holds both executive and legislative powers. One of his most controversial edicts gave him the right to take any steps to stop “threats to the revolution,” vague wording that activists say harkens back to Mubarak-era emergency laws.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in nationwide protests on Friday, sparking clashes between anti-and pro-Morsi crowds in several cities that left more than 200 people wounded.

On Saturday, new clashed broke out in the southern city of Assiut. Morsi opponents and members of the Muslim Brotherhood swung sticks and threw stones at each other outside the offices of the Brotherhood‘s political party, leaving at least seven injured.

ElBaradei and a six other prominent liberal leaders have announced the formation of a National Salvation Front aimed at rallying all non-Islamist groups together to force Morsi to rescind his edicts.

The National Salvation Front leadership includes several who ran against Morsi in this year’s presidential race — Hamdeen Sabahi, who finished a close third, former foreign minister Amr Moussa and moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh. ElBaradei says the group is also pushing for the creation of a new constitutional assembly and a unity government.

ElBaradei said it would be a long process to persuade Morsi that he “cannot get away with murder.”

“There is no middle ground, no dialogue before he rescinds this declaration. There is no room for dialogue until then.”

The grouping seems to represent a newly assertive political foray by ElBaradei, the former chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. ElBaradei returned to Egypt in the year before Mubarak’s fall, speaking out against his rule, and was influential with many of the youth groups that launched the anti-Mubarak revolution.

But since Mubarak’s fall, he has been criticized by some as too Westernized, elite and Hamlet-ish, reluctant to fully assert himself as an opposition leader.

The Brotherhood‘s Freedom and Justice political party, once headed by Morsi, said Saturday in a statement that the president’s decision protects the revolution against former regime figures who have tried to erode elected institutions and were threatening to dissolve the constitutional assembly.

The Brotherhood warned in another statement that there were forces trying to overthrow the elected president in order to return to power. It said Morsi has a mandate to lead, having defeated one of Mubarak’s former prime ministers this summer in a closely contested election.

Morsi’s edicts also removed Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud, the prosecutor general first appointed by Mubarak, who many Egyptians accused of not prosecuting former regime figures strongly enough.

Speaking to a gathering of judges cheering support for him at the high court building in Cairo, Mahmoud warned of a “vicious campaign” against state institutions. He also said judicial authorities are looking into the legality of the decision to remove him — setting up a Catch-22 of legitimacy, since under Morsi’s decree, the courts cannot overturn any of his decisions.

“I thank you for your support of judicial independence,” he told the judges.

“Morsi will have to reverse his decision to avoid the anger of the people,” said Ahmed Badrawy, a labor ministry employee protesting at the courthouse. “We do not want to have an Iranian system here,” he added, referring to fears that hardcore Islamists may try to turn Egypt into a theocracy.

Several hundred protesters remained in Cairo’s Tahrir Square Saturday, where a number of tents have been erected in a sit-in following nearly a week of clashes with riot police.

____

Brian Rohan contributed to this report from Cairo.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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6 ways to tweet yourself out of a job

Hate your job? Want to leave without giving two weeks notice? Thanks to Twitter, it’s never been easier to get fired, says Rob Lammie at Mental Floss

Step 1: Drunk tweet
As any Spring Break partier knows, drinking impairs your judgment. It seems to have also impaired the judgment of Major League pitcher-turned-sports-radio-host Mike Bacsik, who put on quite a show during a San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks NBA game in April 2010. While watching the game, Bacsik bragged that he was “About 12 deep and some shots.” He proceeded to unleash a string of insults aimed at NBA commissioner David Stern, accused the refs of fixing the game, and even threatened to blow up the NBA’s offices. But the one that really got people riled up came after the Mavericks lost the game, when Bacsik tweeted: 

SEE MORE: Why popular kids make more money as adults

@MikeBacsik: “Congrats to all the dirty mexicans in San Antonio.”

After sobering up, Bacsik deleted the offending tweets and issued an apology. But it was too little, too late. Numerous people complained to his radio station, which first suspended Bacsik and later fired him. After his dismissal, he told ESPN Dallas, “When you tweet like that, it’s not a playful, harmless thing… I’m very sorry and will try my best for my actions to speak louder than my tweets.”

Step 2: Break the law (or just anger your governor)
Twitter has become a great tool for politicians to connect to the voting public. Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, for one, has really embraced the technology as a way to share his opinions and views. For example, in December 2009, he sent out a tweet saying:

 @HaleyBarbour: “Glad the Legislature recognizes our dire fiscal situation. Look forward to hearing their ideas on how to trim expenses.”

Jennifer Carter, one of his Twitter followers who worked for the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC), read this message and offered up a suggestion on how Governor Barbour could personally save the taxpayers money:

“Schedule regular medical exams like everyone else instead of paying UMC employees overtime to do it when clinics are usually closed.” 

This “Oh, snap!” moment referred to an incident that had occurred three years earlier, when the governor requested the medical center open on a Saturday, when they were normally closed, and bring in a staff of 15-20 people who were paid overtime to administer his annual check-up. This happened before Carter worked for UMC and she was simply repeating what she had been told by other employees. 

SEE MORE: Does a shaved head give you an advantage in corporate America?

The governor’s office tracked down Carter and made a formal complaint to UMC, saying Carter had violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a privacy law that states no employee of a medical facility can reveal any information about a person’s “protected health information.” Some argued that Carter didn’t violate HIPAA, since she didn’t actually give out any information about the health of the governor. However, others believe that simply saying the governor had even visited a doctor is a violation. 

Semantics aside, UMC administrators said it was a violation, so they suspended Carter for three days without pay and strongly suggested she resign to avoid further disciplinary action, which she did.

SEE MORE: Facebook’s new jobs board: Is LinkedIn toast?

Step 3: Have an NSFW lifestyle
St. Louis-based blogger “The Beautiful Kind” had been writing online about her polyamorous sex life for years. Knowing that not everyone would agree with her chosen lifestyle, she was always very careful about maintaining her anonymity, especially when it came to the workplace. So when she signed up for Twitter, she wanted to be anonymous there as well. She thought that, thanks to the similarities between the two, it was like signing up for an online message board — you supplied your real name to the website privately, but could choose to be known publicly by your username only. But when she logged in for the first time and saw that, not only did it show her username (@TBK365), but also her real name on her profile, she immediately went back and removed it. 

Thinking she was now safely anonymous, she used Twitter to promote her blog and to discuss sexually explicit topics with her followers. However, when her boss at the non-profit group where she worked was told by upper management to do a Google search of all employees, TBK’s Twitter account information — with her real name still associated — came up on the Twitter tracking site topsy.com.

The next day, TBK was called into her boss’ office and fired on the spot. Afterwards, her former boss sent her a letter saying, “While I know you are a good worker and an intelligent person, I hope you try to understand that our employees are held to a different standard. When it comes to private matters, such as one’s sexual explorations and preferences, our employees must keep their affairs private.” Because Missouri is an at-will employment state, meaning employers can fire someone for just about any reason, TBK was SOL.

Step 4: Question company policy
When California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) traded in their standard white shirts for black ones, employee Tim Chantarangsu wasn’t happy with the change. So he tweeted @calpizzakitchen his opinion:

@traphik: “black button ups are the lamest s**t ever!!!”

He didn’t expect anyone to notice or care, but the next day he received a direct message from corporate asking what restaurant he worked for. He knew better than to respond, but they tracked him down anyway and he was fired. They not only referenced his tweet about the shirts, but also an earlier one where he had said he was getting ready to work at “Calipornia Skeetza Kitchen.” 

Little did they know that Chantarangsu is kind of a big deal on another social website, YouTube. Under the name TimothyDeLaGhetto2, Chantarangsu has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, accounting for over 10,500,000 views of his videos at the time. Of course he made a YouTube video telling his Twitter story and it has been viewed well more than 100,000 times. Shortly after the incident, he asked his followers to bombard CPK’s Twitter account with RTs (re-tweets) of his offending message, which they were more than happy to oblige.

Step 5: Make a celebrity look bad
During his five years on the job, Jon Barrett-Ingels had served a lot of celebrities as a waiter at Barney Greengrass, an upscale restaurant in Beverly Hills. One day, Jane Adams, star of the HBO series Hung, came in and had lunch to the tune of $ 13.44. Unfortunately, when the bill came, Adams realized she had left her wallet in the car. Ingels knew who she was, so he told her she could run out and grab it and come back. The actress left, but didn’t return. Instead, someone from her agency called the next day and paid the bill. However, they didn’t leave a tip. Ingels had recently signed up for Twitter and so, his sixth tweet to his 40 followers said:

@PapaBarrett: Jane Adams, star of HBO series “Hung” skipped out on a $ 13.44 check. Her agent called and payed the following day. NO TIP!!!” 

Over the next few weeks, Ingels started using Twitter to send out a few harmless observations about celebrities that came in to eat — mainly what they ordered or what they looked like that day. Then, out of the blue, Jane Adams came back to the restaurant. According to Ingels’ blog, she was clearly upset and begrudgingly slapped $ 3 on the bar for Ingels as a tip. Surprised, Ingels told the actress she really didn’t have to do that, but her gesture was appreciated. She allegedly replied with, “My friend read about it on Twitter!” before storming off. Adams complained about the tweet to management, so someone from Barney’s corporate started following Ingels on Twitter to see what he was up to. After reading his celebrity tweets, it didn’t take long before they gave him the boot.

Step 6: Don’t get hired in the first place
If you’ve followed steps 1 – 5 and you still have a job, here’s the ultimate way to make sure Twitter will keep you from gainful employment.

When recent college grad Skye Riley heard back from Cisco, the computer networking giant, about her job application, one of her first instincts was to tweet about it. Unfortunately, this is what she tweeted:

@theconnor: Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

The unfortunate part? An employee of Cisco, Tim Levad, came across her post while doing a Twitter search for Cisco. He replied to her by saying:

@timmylevad: Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

Riley’s story was the tweet heard round the world. It became a hot topic on tech blogs for weeks afterwards, with writers calling it the “Cisco Fatty” incident. She later claimed that the tweet was taken out of context — that part of her message was referring to a well-paid internship she had turned down — but it appears the damage had already been done. While only she and Cisco know what really happened, according to her online resume, she has never worked for the company.

 — Rob Lammie

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“Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik, husband divorcing

NEW YORK (Reuters) – “The Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik and her husband are divorcing after nine years of marriage, she said in a statement on her Facebook page.

Bialik, who starred in the 1990s sitcom “Blossom,” and Michael Stone have two sons together.

“Divorce is terribly sad, painful and incomprehensible for children,” Bialik, 36, said in the statement. “It is not something we have decided lightly.”

Bialik, a proponent of “attachment parenting” who authored a book on the subject that was published in September, said it “played no role” in the couple’s divorce.

Attachment parenting advocates the nurturing of strong bonds between parents and children, which can include extended breast-feeding and parents and children sleeping in the same bed until the children are as old as 7. A controversial Time magazine cover on the subject in May drew strong reactions across the United States.

“The main priority for us now is to make the transition to two loving homes as smooth and painless as possible,” Bialik wrote in the statement, which was posted to her Facebook page on Wednesday. “Our sons deserve parents committed to their growth and health and that’s what we are focusing on.”

“We will be OK,” the statement concludes.

Bialik is a former child star who appeared in the 1980s television series “Webster” and “The Facts of Life” before landing the title role in the coming-of-age television show “Blossom,” which ran from 1991 to 1995. The show was about a smart teenage girl whose parents have divorced and is learning about life.

The actress attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where she obtained a doctorate in neuroscience.

She met Michael Stone, a fellow graduate student, in calculus class, according to a description of her wedding she previously posted online.

In her most recent role on CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory,” Bialik plays Amy Farrah Fowler, a neuroscientist who dates one of the two main stars of the show, the socially inept but brilliant physicist Sheldon Cooper.

(Reporting By Chris Francescani; Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Bill Trott)

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Four new cases of SARS-like virus found in Saudi, Qatar

LONDON (Reuters) – A new virus from the same family as SARS which sparked a global alert in September has now killed two people in Saudi Arabia, and total cases there and in Qatar have reached six, the World Health Organisation said.

The U.N. health agency issued an international alert in late September saying a virus previously unknown in humans had infected a Qatari man who had recently been in Saudi Arabia, where another man with the same virus had died.

On Friday it said in an outbreak update that it had registered four more cases and one of the new patients had died.

“The additional cases have been identified as part of the enhanced surveillance in Saudi Arabia (3 cases, including 1 death) and Qatar (1 case),” the WHO said.

The new virus is known as a coronavirus and shares some of the symptoms of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged in China in 2002 and killed around a 10th of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.

Among the symptoms in the confirmed cases are fever, coughing and breathing difficulties.

Of the six laboratory-confirmed cases reported to WHO, four cases, including the two deaths, are from Saudi Arabia and two cases are from Qatar.

Britain’s Health Protection Agency, which helped to identify the new virus in September, said the newly reported case from Qatar was initially treated in October in Qatar but then transferred to Germany, and has now been discharged.

Coronaviruses are typically spread like other respiratory infections, such as flu, travelling in airborne droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

The WHO said investigations were being conducted into the likely source of the infection, the method of exposure, and the possibility of human-to-human transmission of the virus.

“Close contacts of the recently confirmed cases are being identified and followed-up,” it said.

It added that so far, only the two most recently confirmed cases in Saudi Arabia were epidemiologically linked – they were from the same family, living in the same household.

“Preliminary investigations indicate that these two cases presented with similar symptoms of illness. One died and the other recovered,” the WHO’s statement said.

Two other members of the same family also suffered similar symptoms of illness, and one died and the other is recovering. But the WHO said laboratory test results on the fatality were still pending, and the person who is recovering had tested negative for the new coronavirus.

The virus has no formal name, but scientists at the British and Dutch laboratories where it was identified refer to it as “London1_novel CoV 2012″.

The WHO urged all its member states to continue surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections.

“Until more information is available, it is prudent to consider that the virus is likely more widely distributed than just the two countries which have identified cases,” it said.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

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Massachusetts natural gas explosion damaged 42 buildings

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Building inspectors assessing homes and businesses in western Massachusetts' largest city after a natural gas explosion says the blast damaged more than 40 buildings.

The Friday evening explosion in Springfield leveled a strip club next to a day care. It injured 18 people, many of them emergency workers. Their injuries aren't life-threatening.

The explosion occurred an hour after gas company workers arrived to investigate a possible gas leak in the area that's 90 miles west of Boston.

Authorities cordoned off the center of the explosion Saturday. Building inspectors say preliminary findings showed the blast damaged 42 buildings housing 115 residential units. Three buildings were immediately condemned.

Punta Cana restaurant manager Omar Fermin says the explosion shattered the business' floor-to-ceiling windows and made the area look like an earthquake zone.

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