Marie Heitmeyer blog

J. Crew settles shareholder suit

NEW YORK – Clothing retailer J. Crew Group Inc. said Tuesday that it has settled a shareholder lawsuit challenging its proposed $3 billion takeover by private equity firms TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners LP.

As part of the settlement, J. Crew said in a statement that on Tuesday it extended until Feb. 15 the deadline for competing offers, and it will reduce the fee that it must pay a suitor for canceling a deal to $20 million in certain circumstances.

J. Crew originally had until Jan. 15 to solicit other offers. It said no other proposals have come in.

The company also agreed that it or its insurers would pay the plaintiffs $10 million after the buyout closes.

It set a special shareholder meeting for March 1 to vote on the deal.

TPG and Leonard Green offered $43.50 per share for the company in late November.

J.Crew's shares slipped 42 cents to $43.40 in late morning trading.

Taiwan flora show features high-tech displays

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Paper-thin speakers blare pop music. Three-D films appear on elongated screens with no need for special viewing glasses. Viewers' pulses turn cocoons into butterflies in an interactive display.

Welcome to the Pavilion of Dreams, a high-tech enclave within the Taipei International Flora Exposition, where Taiwanese artists and engineers are using technology-generated flowers and plants to strut the island's cutting edge know-how to onlookers from around the world.

The exposition, which runs from November through April, has so far drawn more than 1.9 million visitors to an expansive site in northern Taipei.

Already recognized as a supplier of smartphone and computer components to global technology companies, Taiwan wants to use the pavilion to highlight its capacity for product innovation in the increasingly competitive high-tech world, said Hsueh Wen-chen, head of the government-funded creativity center that designed the popular pavilion.

"Taiwan is not so well-known for creating technologies because we use them mainly in making parts and components for consumer products," she said. "Here we let our imaginations run wild in a way that can give us ideas about how to meet consumer needs when we design our products."

Visitors to the pavilion are greeted by a 3.5-ton artificial flower hanging from the ceiling. It opens and folds its petals to the rhythm of pop music blared from scores of palm-sized speakers, cut into leaf shapes to merge with their surroundings. The speakers are made from a thin, flexible metal coated with a vibrating membrane with strategically placed sensors.

In an adjacent exhibition room, a row of 65-inch flat screens runs 3D animated films of flowers and plants that visitors can view without special glasses because the screens have been engineered to display something known as lenticular imaging.

Just around the corner, a wall of 10-foot- (3-meter-) tall liquid crystal glass panels — looking like a giant transparent bowl — shows a lifelike projection of flowers in the wild.

Unlike conventional flat designs, the 18 panels are curved to create a stunning visual effect. Engineers changed the properties of the membrane attached to the glass so light permeates the curved surface evenly — just like it does on the flat screen version.

Perhaps most impressive of all, a nearby amphitheater shows a film about flora and fauna in a deeply forested environment that allows viewers to transform a small plant into a large tree by breathing onto the screen, or turn a cocoon into a butterfly by placing their wrists near the screen and letting their pulses do the work.

The apparently magical effect is accomplished by using ultra-wide bands, a radio technology first developed at a Russian lab to register life signs in human beings without making physical contact.

"Taiwan is now adapting the UWB technology for medical and other uses," said Yuan Nai-chuan, chief program producer at the pavilion. "We thought it would work very nicely here, too."

St. Louis tops list of most dangerous US cities

TRENTON, N.J. – St. Louis overtook Camden, N.J., as the nation's most dangerous city in 2009, according to a national study released Sunday.

The study by CQ Press found St. Louis had 2,070.1 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 429.4. That helped St. Louis beat out Camden, which topped last year's list and was the most dangerous city for 2003 and 2004.

Detroit, Flint, Mich., and Oakland, Calif., rounded out the top five. For the second straight year, the safest city with more than 75,000 residents was Colonie, N.Y.

The annual rankings are based on population figures and crime data compiled by the FBI. Some criminologists question the findings, saying the methodology is unfair.

Greg Scarbro, unit chief of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, said the FBI also discourages using the data for these types of rankings.

Kara Bowlin, spokeswoman for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, said the city actually has been getting safer over the last few years. She said crime in St. Louis has gone down each year since 2007, and so far in 2010, St. Louis crime is down 7 percent.

Erica Van Ross, spokeswoman for the St. Louis Police Department, called the rankings irresponsible.

"Crime is based on a variety of factors. It's based on geography, it's based on poverty, it's based on the economy," Van Ross said.

"That is not to say that urban cities don't have challenges, because we do," Van Ross said. "But it's that it's irresponsible to use the data in this way."

Year-Long Unemployment Extension? Democratic Senators Float Proposal

As Democrats attempt to position H.R.6419, theEmergency Unemployment Compensation Continuation Act, for another vote in the House of Representatives, where it failed to pass on Thursday, there remains the problem of passage in the U. S. Senate, which has no vote scheduled on the unemployment benefits extension issue.Two senators, Jack Reed (D-RI) andRobert Casey (D-PA), proposed Wednesday that, instead of the stop-gap measures that have been presented thus far, unemployment extension benefits should be extended for another year.

"We are still in the process of trying to establish the schedule of the lame duck session," Reed , "in terms of the remaining days of the session, so no specifics, but think we all understand that this is something that is going to have to be done."

The current unemployment extensions are set to expire on December 1.Congress is set to recess for Thanksgiving on Monday, November 22, which means that the House has to pass the current measure by Friday, November 19, to see a vote in the Senate before the holiday recess.Otherwise, the legislation would have to wait until Congress reconvenes on Friday, November 26.

Reed said, "At this point it's not been scheduled. We're trying to make a case that there will be action but at this point I can't point to a specific time it will come up for a vote this week."

Senator Robert Casey, who joined Reed during the conference call interview, noted, "Congress must act now to preserve unemployment insurance for the two million Americans and 83,000 Pennsylvanians who will lose this financial lifeline at the end of the month. Doing nothing will hurt millions of Americans, job creation and the economic recovery."

Republicans blocked the passage of H.R.6419 because it wasn't funded or offset.Republicans are pushing for unused stimulus money to be used to pay for the extensions.

But , millions of Americans begin losing their eligibility for emergency extension benefits.For many, unemployment benefits checks, which average approximately $312 per payee per week, are part of a combination of savings, pensions, loans, and contributions that are keeping them currently financially afloat.For some, it is their only means of income.If no extension legislation is passed by the House, it is estimated that by the end of December as many asan already estimated 2-4 million individuals who once received benefits and have since become reclassified as ineligible (and who are ).

is the third such measure placed before Congress this year.A year-long extension, like the one proposed by Senators Reed and Casey, would allow for a uninterrupted continuation of benefits, providing recipients with a measure of security and Congress a respite from having to debate unemployment legislation for weeks at a time.

But such a measure would meet stiff resistance from Republicans.The last piece of unemployment benefits legislation was filibustered and , although the emergency benefits had expired at the beginning of June, leaving millions without benefits for nearly two full months.

Although any unemployment extension legislation that comes from the House of Representatives in the future will undoubtedly be paid for (Republicans will control the House in the 112th Congress, which convenes January 3), it is very doubtful that there will be any measure that allows for such an extended period of unemployment extensions.

Boehner reviewing requests for cameras in House chamber

C-SPAN's Brian Lamb couldn't convince Newt Gingrich to let the network install cameras in Congress. Or Nancy Pelosi. Now he's working on John Boehner, the presumptive speaker of the House for the 112th Congress.

Lamb, the network's founder and chief executive, has longfloor debates as the network sees fit, with its own cameras capturing reaction shots or taking a wider view of the chamber. Congress currently owns and operates the cameras, with C-SPAN -- and other networks -- relying on its feed.

And in reviving his crusade, Lamb is trying to throw Boehner's own words back at him.

In January, Boehner blasted the Democrats for what he dubbed a lack of transparency during the health care debate. The Ohio Republican, who's party will control the House, thenon the health care overhaul, and stated that "every issue of national import should be debated by the people's elected representatives in full public view."

Lamb reminded Boehner of that statement in a letter hand-delivered last week.

"We do not propose to change the current House recording system or its output." Lamb wrote. "C-SPAN's request is for the addition of a few small robotically-operated cameras in the House chamber.љ When mixed into the existing House production, shots from these cameras would allow us to producer a second feed of House floor debates that is a journalistic producer." (You can read Lamb's full letter )

Boehner press secretary Michael Steel told The Cutline on Monday that "Rep. Boehner is committed to making the House more transparent and accountable."

"A number of media outlets, including C-SPAN, have requested the ability to install private cameras in the House chamber," Steel continued.љ "While no decisions have been made at this time, these requests are under review."