BlackBerry posts surprise profit, but subscriber base down

By Euan Rocha

TORONTO (Reuters) - BlackBerry reported a surprise quarterly profit on Thursday and said it shipped 1 million of its all-new Z10 smartphones in the period, but the company has yet to convince some investors that its turnaround plan is succeeding.

The Canadian smartphone maker's shares were up nearly 2 percent in early trading, but had jumped of more than 10 percent immediately after the results came out. Some investors focused on a decline in the company's subscriber base, a possible threat to its long-term growth prospects.

Still, the results offered solace to both bulls and bears on BlackBerry, which virtually invented on-your-hip email, but has lost market share to iPhone maker Apple and smartphones using Google Inc's Android software.

"I think the 1 million units is a nice start," said Morningstar analyst Brian Colello. "I think the encouraging thing is that BlackBerry was still able to sell a good portion of older models and generate solid service revenue during the transition. I think that will be important in terms of cash balance and profitability."

The touchscreen Z10, which uses an all-new operating system, is key to BlackBerry's revival. Its introduction a month before the end of the quarter received a warm reception in Canada and a few other countries, but the initial U.S. launch, just last week, was muted.

Some analysts said revenue missed expectations and that the decline in subscriber numbers to 76 million from 79 million during the fourth quarter ended March 2 clouded BlackBerry's long-term turnaround prospects.

The stock was up 1.9 percent at $14.83 in early trading on Nasdaq.

BREAK-EVEN FORECAST

BlackBerry said Mike Lazaridis, who co-founded BlackBerry nearly 30 years ago, would step down as vice chairman and director. Lazaridis was co-chief executive officer until last year.

The company also surprised investors by saying it believes it will approach break-even financial results in its first quarter, based on a lower cost base, more efficient supply chain and improved hardware margins.

Analysts on average had expected a loss of 10 cents a share in the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

BlackBerry said net income in the fourth quarter was $98 million, or 19 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $125 million, or 24 cents a share.

Excluding one-time items, the company reported a profit of 22 cents a share. Analysts had expected a loss.

Yet the company is not out of the woods. Quarterly revenue fell to $2.68 billion from $4.2 billion a year earlier, below analysts' estimates of $2.84 billion.

"All in all, I'm happy because I think the majority seemed to be expecting the world to cave in on them, and that did not happen," said Eric Jackson, founder and managing partner of Ironfire Capital LLC, which owns BlackBerry shares.

(Additional reporting by Allison Martell, Alastair Sharp and Sinead Carew; Editing by Janet Guttsman and Lisa Von Ahn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blackberry-reports-quarterly-profit-one-million-sales-z10-111608415.html

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Discovery may allow scientists to make fuel from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

Mar. 26, 2013 ? Excess carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere created by the widespread burning of fossil fuels is the major driving force of global climate change, and researchers the world over are looking for new ways to generate power that leaves a smaller carbon footprint.

Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have found a way to transform the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere into useful industrial products. Their discovery may soon lead to the creation of biofuels made directly from the carbon dioxide in the air that is responsible for trapping the sun's rays and raising global temperatures.

"Basically, what we have done is create a microorganism that does with carbon dioxide exactly what plants do-absorb it and generate something useful," said Michael Adams, member of UGA's Bioenergy Systems Research Institute, Georgia Power professor of biotechnology and Distinguished Research Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

During the process of photosynthesis, plants use sunlight to transform water and carbon dioxide into sugars that the plants use for energy, much like humans burn calories from food.

These sugars can be fermented into fuels like ethanol, but it has proven extraordinarily difficult to efficiently extract the sugars, which are locked away inside the plant's complex cell walls.

"What this discovery means is that we can remove plants as the middleman," said Adams, who is co-author of the study detailing their results published March 25 in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We can take carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and turn it into useful products like fuels and chemicals without having to go through the inefficient process of growing plants and extracting sugars from biomass."

The process is made possible by a unique microorganism called Pyrococcus furiosus, or "rushing fireball," which thrives by feeding on carbohydrates in the super-heated ocean waters near geothermal vents. By manipulating the organism's genetic material, Adams and his colleagues created a kind of P. furiosus that is capable of feeding at much lower temperatures on carbon dioxide.

The research team then used hydrogen gas to create a chemical reaction in the microorganism that incorporates carbon dioxide into 3-hydroxypropionic acid, a common industrial chemical used to make acrylics and many other products.

With other genetic manipulations of this new strain of P. furiosus, Adams and his colleagues could create a version that generates a host of other useful industrial products, including fuel, from carbon dioxide.

When the fuel created through the P. furiosus process is burned, it releases the same amount of carbon dioxide used to create it, effectively making it carbon neutral, and a much cleaner alternative to gasoline, coal and oil.

"This is an important first step that has great promise as an efficient and cost-effective method of producing fuels," Adams said. "In the future we will refine the process and begin testing it on larger scales."

The research was supported by the Department of Energy as part of the Electrofuels Program of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy under Grant DE-AR0000081.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Georgia. The original article was written by James Hataway.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Matthew W. Keller, Gerrit J. Schut, Gina L. Lipscomb, Angeli L. Menon, Ifeyinwa J. Iwuchukwu, Therese T. Leuko, Michael P. Thorgersen, William J. Nixon, Aaron S. Hawkins, Robert M. Kelly, and Michael W. W. Adams. Exploiting microbial hyperthermophilicity to produce an industrial chemical, using hydrogen and carbon dioxide. PNAS, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1222607110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/Q5Tm_1ZgQ84/130326112301.htm

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Head of Chadian army claims troops kill Belmoktar

N'DJAMENA, Chad (AP) ? The head of Chad's military has announced on state television that Chadian troops deployed in northern Mali killed Moktar Belmoktar, the international terrorist responsible for the attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria that resulted in the death of dozens of foreigners. The French military, which is leading the offensive in northern Mali, says it cannot confirm the information.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Zakaria Ngobongue read a statement saying Chadian soldiers on Saturday had destroyed a jihadist base in the Adrar and Ifoghas mountains of North Mali, killing Belmoktar.

The purported death of Belmoktar comes a day after Chad's president said their troops killed Abou Zeid, the other main al-Qaida commander in the region, a claim the French also said they could not confirm.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/head-chadian-army-claims-troops-kill-belmoktar-204108959.html

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Exit polls: Swiss OK tough limits on bosses' pay

BERLIN (AP) ? Exit polls show Swiss voters have approved a measure to boost shareholders' say on executive pay.

The "Rip-off Initiative" is designed to prevent bosses from receiving huge bonuses even when their companies do badly.

The head of polling group gfs.bern, Claude Longchamp, told Swiss public television station SRF that 68 percent of voters backed the measure and 32 percent voted.

If Sunday's exit polls prove correct, parliament will have to draft a law giving shareholders the right to hold a binding vote on all compensation for company executives and directors. The law will also ban signing and leaving bonuses for senior managers and push greater corporate transparency.

Breaching the rules could lead to a fine of up to six annual salaries and up to three years in prison.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-03-03-Switzerland-Bosses'%20Pay/id-6a8b8c9d54c74443ba2a55e64b5659b1

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1 dead in shooting outside rapper's bus in Philly

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? Philadelphia police said they were looking Friday for anyone who may have seen someone in a black, four-door sedan with tinted windows fire shots into a crowd of people surrounding the tour bus of rapper French Montana, killing one person and injuring another.

The shooting happened late Thursday night as the bus, followed by several cars with other friends and family, arrived at a hotel near Penn's Landing for a post-concert party after the rapper had headlined a sold-out show at the Theatre of Living Arts.

Homicide Capt. James Clark said the sedan pulled up and someone fired shots into the crowd from a passenger side window. Two people in the crowd fired back, Clark said, and police were mulling whether to file charges against them. The rapper and members of his entourage were being interviewed at police headquarters and are cooperating in the investigation, but police don't know if they were targeted, Clark said.

Investigators are looking for witnesses and searching for any surveillance footage that may provide clues.

"We believe someone saw something," he said. "It could have been a lot more tragic."

The man killed was identified by police as 26-year-old Jowann King, of Flushing, N.Y. Police did not release the name of the man who was injured.

The Moroccan rapper, born Karim Kharbouch, posted a photo on Twitter showing a police officer interviewing a person after the shooting, and also posted photos of himself with Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill at the show. The New York artist is scheduled to play Brighton Music Hall in Boston on Friday night and is touring to promote his upcoming debut album, "Excuse My French," which features Nicki Minaj.

Mill was on the tour bus Thursday night, Clark said.

Last month, three people were killed and five injured in a shootout and crash on the Las Vegas strip; police think that shootout may have started as an argument at the valet area of the upscale Aria resort-casino the same night French Montana was playing at Aria's signature nightclub, Haze.

A message left by The Associated Press for the artist's publicist was not immediately returned.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/1-dead-shooting-outside-rappers-bus-philly-114545218.html

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