Cablevision subscribers sue over Hurricane Sandy outages

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Even as workers scramble to clean up the mess that Hurricane Sandy left in the Northeast two weeks ago, a legal mess is beginning to spill into the court system.

Cablevision subscribers Jeffery and Irwin Bard filed a class-action lawsuit against the cable provider in New York Supreme Court this week, seeking restitution for television, telephone and internet outages caused by Sandy, according to court papers obtained by TheWrap.

The suit, which alleges breach of contract and unjust enrichment, claims that Cablevision “continued to advertise falsely that it was providing services to its customers” even after the storm caused outages for its customers, and “could not restore services to many of its customers for days, or even weeks.”

Moreover, according to the complaint, Cablevision continued to issue bills for services it was unable to provide in the aftermath of the storm, and “instituted a secretive policy to offer ‘customer credits’ only to customers who affirmatively and actively demanded rebates on a discretionary basis,” rather than offer across-the-board rebates to its customers, even though it had access to which customers had lost power and for how long.

A spokesman for Cablevision told TheWrap that the lawsuit “misstates the facts and is without merit,” and that Cablevision has “an extremely broad and customer friendly credit policy following Sandy.”

“Blanket or arbitrary credits for cable outages could shortchange customers because each case is different and our policy covers the entire period of time when Cablevision service was out, including when the service interruption was caused by the loss of electrical power,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Cablevision does allow for customers to call and process their credit, or go to optimum.net/credit, where they can detail the period of their outage to receive credit.

The suit, filed Tuesday, seeks unspecified damages for each member of the class, plus attorneys’ fees and court costs, along with a permanent restraint barring Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision from billing or invoicing customers when there’s a service outage of more than 24 hours.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)

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Corporate China’s Black Hole of Debt

For China bulls, things are starting to look up. The property market has been showing signs of life, and October retail sales, investment, and industrial production have come in above forecasts. A manufacturing index also showed improvement, and exports increased 11.6 percent in October, the fastest pace in five months.

Yet one figure is going in the wrong direction: China’s corporate debt has risen from 108 percent of the entire economy last year to 122 percent in 2012, its highest level in 15 years, estimates GK Dragonomics, a Beijing-based economic consultancy. That makes China’s corporate sector one of the most debt-laden in the world. “Companies have seen their business slowing down and revenues were not what they had expected. They have bridged the gap by taking on more debt,” says GK Dragonomics Research Director Andrew Batson.

Key industries such as steel, construction machinery, aluminum, and coal are facing overcapacity, squeezed margins, and most alarmingly, debt. “That is dragging down corporate investment, and that matters for the overall economy,” says Louis Kuijs, chief China economist at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in Hong Kong. “I don’t expect the uptick in growth to be very sharp.” He predicts fourth-quarter gross domestic product will rise 7.1 percent, below the average forecast of 7.7 percent in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Kuijs expects most companies to focus more on debt reduction than on building another plant or opening another mine.

Complicating matters is that many of the heavily indebted companies are state-owned, and the banks that lent to them are state-controlled, too. That means the government may have to pick up the tab if any of these companies is unable to manage its debt. The sudden bankruptcy of a giant state corporation would have political as well as financial consequences. This implicit government guarantee behind a portion of China’s corporate debt means the government’s actual obligations are likely higher than the 49 percent figure estimated by GK Dragonomics. Lump together corporate, public, and household debt, says the research firm, and you get a figure close to 206 percent of GDP.

One sign of how tough it is for companies is the return of a problem that plagued China in the 1990s: triangular debt. That’s when a manufacturer that hasn’t been paid for its product is unable to pay its suppliers, which in turn struggle to pay their suppliers. By Sept. 30, total accounts receivable—money owed for products already delivered—for China’s industrial companies had reached 8 trillion yuan ($ 1.3 trillion), up 16.5 percent from September 2011, according to the national statistics bureau. “China has already tipped over the precipice into a very bad debt crisis,” warns Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research, a Beijing-based equities analysis firm.

The origin of this morass dates back to late 2008, when the country unleashed a massive wave of loans from its state-owned banks to the corporate sector. That stimulus helped Beijing avoid the major unemployment and dire downturn that afflicted much of the world. Hopes were that the surge in loans would be a temporary measure. Instead, China’s banks, trust companies, and other financing operations are on track this year to issue new credit equal to one-third of GDP, the fourth year in a row of such a sizable expansion, according to Fitch Ratings.

China’s banking assets will have grown by almost $ 14 trillion between 2008 and 2013 (Fitch includes an estimate of loans issued by the informal banking sector and offshore banks—data not included in Beijing’s official figures). “This is equivalent to replicating the entire U.S. commercial banking sector in just five years,” says Charlene Chu, head of Chinese bank ratings at Fitch, in a Nov. 8 note. “Rising leverage either will swamp borrowers’ ability to repay, or banks’ funding and capital needs will fall short of existing resources.”

Accounts are appearing in the Chinese press of litigation by companies that haven’t been paid. As of the end of September, a logistics unit of state-owned Anhui-based Maanshan Iron & Steel had filed 23 lawsuits for the recovery of money and goods it was owed, reported the official Xinhua News Agency. Maanshan announced on Oct. 8 that “the logistics company has become insolvent.” Maanshan did not respond to requests for comment.

In August, state media reported that China’s central bank, as well as various commissions and ministries, had launched an investigation to uncover the scale of corporate indebtedness among state and private companies. “The lurking debt risk, which once hit China in the 1990s, could take a huge toll on the real economy,” warned Xinhua on Oct. 28. At China’s top four listed steel companies, debt as a percentage of equity now averages 80 percent, with anything above 50 percent considered very high, says Helen Lau, senior analyst for metals and mining at UOB Kay Hian (UOBK), a Singapore-based securities company.

Any turnaround in the corporate sector will involve tackling overcapacity. Lau estimates that the steel industry has 900 million tons of productive capacity, some 200 million tons too much. Yet shuttering the excess production lines may not happen anytime soon. “All the big producers have strong backing from the state banks. That is why they have been adding new capacity. This is not a commercial decision but a political one,” says UOB’s Lau. It’s happening because “the government wants to boost local economies.”

One likely result: a jump in bad bank loans. Standard & Poor’s (MHP) is predicting that the portion of nonperforming loans will grow from about 2 percent of total bank lending at the end of 2011 to 3 percent by the end of the year. That could rise to 5 percent by yearend 2013, says S&P’s Liao Qiang, director of ratings for financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region. “The challenge for China,” says GK Dragonomics’ Batson, “is to look for ways to not just mobilize vast amounts of money but to put their money in the right places.”

The bottom line: Total accounts receivable in China rose 16.5 percent, to $ 1.3 trillion, from a year ago, a worrying sign for companies.

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Rebels in Congo reach door of Goma

GOMA, Congo (AP) — A Rwandan-backed rebel group advanced to within 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) of Goma, a crucial provincial capital in eastern Congo, marking the first time that rebels have come this close since 2008.

Congolese army spokesman Col. Olivier Hamuli said the fighting has been going on since 6 a.m. Sunday and the front line has moved to just a few kilometers (miles) outside the city. After more than nine hours of violent clashes the two sides took a break, with M23 rebels establishing a checkpoint just 100 meters (yards) away from one held by the military in the village of Munigi, exactly 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) outside the Goma city line.

Contacted by telephone on the front line, M23 rebel spokesman Col. Vianney Kazarama said the group will spend the night in Goma.

“We are about to take the town. We will spend the night in Goma tonight,” said Kazarama. “We are confident that we can take Goma and then our next step will be to take Bukavu,” he said mentioning the capital of the next province to the south.

The M23 rebel group is made up of soldiers from a now-defunct rebel army, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, a group made-up primarily of fighters from the Tutsi ethnic group, the ethnicity that was targeted in Rwanda‘s 1994 genocide. In 2008, the CNDP led by Rwandan commando Gen. Laurent Nkunda marched his soldiers to the doorstep of Goma, abruptly stopping just before taking the city.

In the negotiations that followed and which culminated in a March 23, 2009 peace deal, the CNDP agreed to disband and their fighters joined the national army of Congo. They did not pick up their arms again until this spring, when hundreds of ex-CNDP fighters defected from the army in April, claiming that the Congolese government had failed to uphold their end of the 2009 agreement.

Reports, including one by the United Nations Group of Experts, have shown that M23 is actively being backed by Rwanda and the new rebellion is likely linked to the fight to control Congo’s rich mineral wealth.

The latest fighting broke out Thursday and led to the deaths of 151 rebels and two soldiers. On Saturday U.N. attack helicopters targeted M23 positions in eastern Congo.

Also on Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had called Rwandan President Paul Kagame “to request that he use his influence on the M23 to help calm the situation and restrain M23 from continuing their attack,” according to peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous who spoke at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Saturday.

North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Saturday that the Congolese army had earlier retreated from Kibumba, which is 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Goma, after thousands of Rwandans, who he says were backing the rebels, attacked early Saturday.

“Rwandan forces bombarded our positions in Kibumba since early this morning and an estimated 3,500 crossed the border to attack us,” he said Saturday.

In downtown Goma, panicked residents had come out to try to get more information on what was happening. A 45-year-old mother of five said that she has nowhere to go.

“I don’t really know what is happening, I’ve seen soldiers and tanks in the streets and that scares me,” said Imaculee Kahindo. Asked if she planned to leave the city, she said: “What can we do? I will probably hide in my house with my children.”

Hamuli, the spokesman for the Congolese army, denied reports that soldiers were fleeing.

In 2008 as Nkunda’s CNDP rebels amassed at the gates of Goma, reporters inside the city were able to see Congolese soldiers running in the opposite direction, after having abandoned their posts. The Congolese army is notoriously dysfunctional with soldiers paid only small amounts, making it difficult to secure their loyalties during heavy fighting.

“We are fighting 3 kilometers from Goma, just past the airport. And our troops are strong enough to resist the rebels,” said Hamuli. “We won’t let the M23 march into our town,” he said. Asked if his troops were fleeing, he added: “These are false rumors. We are not going anywhere.”

U.N. peacekeeping chief Ladsous said that the rebels were very well-equipped, including with night vision equipment allowing them to fight at night.

Reports by United Nations experts have accused Rwanda, as well as Uganda, of supporting the rebels. Both countries strongly deny any involvement and Uganda said if the charges continue it will pull its peacekeeping troops out of Somalia, where they are playing an important role in pushing out the Islamist extremist rebels.

The U.N. Security Council called for an immediate stop to the violence following a two-hour, closed-door emergency meeting. The council said it would add sanctions against M23 rebels and demanded that rebels immediately stop their advance toward the provincial capital of Goma.

“We must stop the M23″ because Goma’s fall “would, inevitably, turn into a humanitarian crisis,” said France‘s U.N. Ambassador, Gerard Araud. He added that U.N. officials would decide in the coming days which M23 leaders to target for additional sanctions.

___

Associated Press writer Maria Sanminiatelli at the United Nations and Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

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Man demoted for Facebook comments wins case

LONDON (AP) — Britain‘s High Court ruled Friday that a Christian was unfairly demoted for posting his opposition to gay marriage on Facebook.

Adrian Smith was stripped of his management position with the Trafford Housing Trust in northwest England and had his salary cut by 40 percent after posting that gay weddings in churches were “an equality too far.”

The trust said Smith broke its code of conduct by expressing religious or political views that might upset co-workers.

But High Court judge Michael Briggs ruled Friday that Smith had been “taken to task for doing nothing wrong” and found his employer guilty of breach of contract.

Smith said he was glad the court had backed the principle that “Britain is a free country where people have freedom of speech.”

And he received support from veteran gay rights and civil liberties campaigner Peter Tatchell, who said Smith’s employer had overreacted.

“In a democratic society, Adrian has a right to express his point of view, even if it is misguided and wrong,” Tatchell said.

Trafford Housing Trust chief executive Matthew Gardiner, said he “fully accepted” the court’s decision and had apologized to Smith, though it was not clear whether he would be reinstated.

In Britain, same-sex couples can currently form civil partnerships, which carry the same legal rights as marriage. The government wants to change the law to include gay marriage, a move opposed by many religious groups.

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Jon Stewart tells Bill O’Reilly to stop worrying about loss of “traditional America”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Jon Stewart has a message for Fox News host Bill O’Reilly — chill out about the loss of “traditional America.”

“The Daily Show” funnyman skewered the right-leaning network on Thursday for treating the re-election of President Barack Obama – a victory aided by minority voters – as a cataclysm for the white men who were once in the driver’s seat in America. Stewart implied that this longing on behalf of some of the network’s commentators for a Grover’s Corners past may not be rooted in reality.

“Yes Bill,” Stewart said. “Obama’s re-election marked the moment that traditional America ended. The moment when the family from the 1950s sitcom ‘Leave it to Beaver’ ceased to be real.”

Moreover, Stewart said that ethnic demographics are constantly shifting in the United States and that such changes can be a little troublesome for the folks who were in control.

“You don’t need to worry so much,” Stewart counseled. “What you are demonstrating is the health and vitality of America’s greatest tradition – a fevered, frightened ruling class lamenting the rise of a new ethnically and religiously diverse new class. One that will destroy all that is virtuous and good and bring the American experiment crashing to the ground.”

He added that those rising ethnic groups work so hard so that their children and grandchildren have the opportunity to be intolerant of new immigrant populations. Thus the circle of life continues.

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Gaza hospitals stretched, need supplies to treat wounded: WHO

GENEVA (Reuters) – Gaza hospitals are overwhelmed with casualties from Israel‘s bombings and face critical shortages of drugs and medical supplies, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday.

The U.N. health agency appealed for $ 10 million from donors to meet the need for drugs and supplies over the next three months.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket fired from the enclave on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The WHO, quoting Health Ministry officials in Gaza, said 382 people have been injured – 245 adults and 137 children.

“Many of those injured have been admitted to hospitals with severe burns, injuries from collapsing buildings and head injuries,” the WHO said in a statement issued in Geneva.

Health authorities have declared an emergency situation in all hospitals to cope with patients, it said.

“Before the hostilities began, health facilities were severely over stretched mainly as a result of the siege of Gaza,” the WHO said. Israel maintains a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip with the help of neighboring Egypt.

The Gaza Ministry of Health‘s supplies of many life-saving drugs and disposable equipment were at “zero stock”, it said.

“The Ministry of Health has postponed all elective surgeries due to the emergency and shortages in anaesthesia drugs,” it said. Non-urgent cases are being transferred to hospitals run by aid groups and health personnel have been asked to report to the nearest health facility for extended shifts, it said.

“WHO appeals to the international and regional community for urgent financial support to provide essential medicines to cover pre-existing shortages, as well as emergency supplies for treating casualties and the chronically ill,” it said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Diesel founder considering jewelery and Japan to beat slowdown

ROME (Reuters) – Diesel brand founder Renzo Rosso is considering expanding into jewelery and launching a new project in Japan to fuel growth at his fashion group despite the global economic turmoil.

Known as the “king of high-end casualwear”, the rockstar-looking businessman is one of the most dynamic figures in a fashion industry threatened by a slowdown in its core markets.

A painful recession in southern Europe and a slowdown in China are forcing European brands to come up with new ideas to lure consumers back into their stores.

Accessories, which, like leather belts and perfumes, are more affordable than evening dresses, are the fastest-growing category in a luxury industry expected to grow 5 percent this year from 13 percent in 2011 at constant exchange rates, according to consultancy Bain & Co.

Italian designer Giorgio Armani said in September he would boost sales of accessories.

Rosso, who also owns young-focused brands such Maison Martin Margiela and Viktor & Rolf, said he expected the recession to continue to hurt Italy well beyond 2013.

“There is a deep crisis and I believe it will remain serious for two other years,” Rosso said on the sidelines of the IHT summit on Friday afternoon.

“We need to take care of our licences for sunglasses, watches and perfumes. A world that fascinates me is jewelery. With my brands I want to enter this category too,” he said.

A visionary entrepreneur, Rosso was the first to turn stone-washed denim into a premium category in the 1980s.

His holding “Only The Brave” – which includes his brands as well as Staff International, a company that produces under licence for Just Cavalli, Vivienne Westwood Red Label, DSquared and Marc Jacobs Men – had revenues of around $ 2 billion in 2011.

DENIM KING

Rosso said he finds inspiration for new projects from travelling and working with his international team.

“I went to Japan with my daughters for three days and I came back with an incredible idea about a business that is totally different from what I do but related to clothing,” he said.

Rosso said nobody really understood him when he started to age his jeans by washing them with stones. His products are now sold worldwide, mostly in Japan.

“Japan is a country where fashion is extreme, more than elsewhere. I also love London,” curly haired Rosso said.

“Russia is going very well, like the Arab countries. Another growing market is Brazil, where people enjoy life,” he said.

Rosso, who works hands-on in Diesel but leaves designers at his other brands complete autonomy, has interests spanning from wine to eco-friendly technologies.

On Friday, Rosso announced a partnership with his friend rockstar Bono to sell in Diesel stores fashion products, sourced or entirely made in Africa under an Diesel+Edun label.

Through his Red Circle investment arm, Rosso is also the single-biggest shareholder with a stake of around 9 percent in growing Italian online fashion retailer Yoox .

Rosso has also invested in an Italian start-up incubator called H-Farm and in a maker of electric vehicles.

Rosso, whose thought-provoking slogans “Be Stupid” and “For Successful Living” have inspired books, did not rule out other investments in the future.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

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Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the “Iron Dome” defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh – where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister – and struck a police headquarters.

Along the Tel Aviv beachfront, volleyball games came to an abrupt halt and people crouched as sirens sounded. Two interceptor rockets streaked into the sky. A flash and an explosion followed as Iron Dome, deployed only hours earlier near the city, destroyed the incoming projectile in mid-air.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia’s foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh’s office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister’s office and pledged: “We will declare victory from here.”

Hamas‘s armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday’s rocket attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

“Well that wasn’t such a big deal,” said one woman, who had watched the interception while clinging for protection to the trunk of a baby palm tree on a traffic island.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Among those killed in airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding on motorcycles.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, along with appeals to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

RESERVIST CALL-UP

At a late night session on Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said, in a signal Israel was edging closer to an invasion.

Around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan … it will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to win a January national election.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

“Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river,” Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he surveyed the wreckage from a bomb-blast site in central Gaza.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s manoeuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

“DE-ESCALATION”

Netanyahu spoke late on Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time since the offensive began, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“(Netanyahu) expressed his deep appreciation for the U.S. position that Israel has a right to defend itself and thanked him for American aid in purchasing Iron Dome batteries,” the statement added.

The two leaders have had a testy relationship and have been at odds over how to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

A White House official said on Saturday Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to the Gaza conflict.

Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters that Washington “wants the same thing as the Israelis want”, an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. He said the United States is emphasizing diplomacy and “de-escalation”.

In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had spoken to Netanyahu and Egypt’s Mursi, stressing to the Israeli leader that Israel had a right to self-defense and that a ceasefire must be agreed as soon as possible to avoid more bloodshed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

The Israeli military said 492 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since the operation began. Iron Dome intercepted another 245.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

Some families in Gaza have abandoned their homes – some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets – and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer)

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Google Considering Wireless Network [REPORT]

Google is looking to cut out the middleman for its Android mobile devices and begin offering wireless service itself, according to a report.

The search giant met with reps from Dish Network to partner on a wireless service “that would rival” wireless networks like AT&T and Verizon, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited “people familiar with the discussions.” The talks, however, could amount to nothing, the article notes.

[More from Mashable: Google Updates Blogger Mobile Apps to Version 2.0]

Dish bought wireless spectrum in 2008 that it plans to build out into such a network. The company has met with other, unnamed companies aside from Google, according to the report. In an interview this week, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen said potential partners include companies “who would like to be in the industry” and don’t offer wireless service. He did not name Google or any other of the companies. Despite the talk, there’s speculation that AT&T might partner with Dish on the spectrum offering.

Google bid on wireless spectrum in 2008, but lost to Verizon and AT&T. Google also took a $ 500 million stake in mobile broadband firm Clearwire, which it sold this year for $ 66.5 million.

[More from Mashable: Google Launches Mobile Game You Play in Real Life]

Despite being shut out of wireless for now, Google is offering wired broadband service in Kansas City. The company also diversified into the wireless handset business last year with its $ 12.5 billion purchase of Motorola.

Bonus Gallery: Hands-On: Verizon’s Droid DNA Wows With High-Def Display

Verizon’s Droid DNA

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Robert Pattinson looks for danger after “Twilight”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Robert Pattinson has set young hearts aflutter as the teen vampire Edward Cullen in the “Twilight Saga” films, but as the sun sets on the franchise that launched his career, the actor is looking for more grown-up and “dangerous” roles.

“Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” released this week, is the fifth and final in the series, and Edward’s character shifts from brooding, tormented lover to a contented husband and father who must protect his family from an ancient vampire clan.

But Pattinson, 26, still has those rakish good looks that drew a screaming fan base and made him a tabloid fixture. While the avid fan excitement around the “Twilight” series overwhelms him, the British actor hopes his audience will follow him as he moves on.

“It’s all about control. Now, I don’t feel like I have any control whatsoever,” he told Reuters with a laugh.

“They’re a very ardent fan base, so to figure out a way to harness that vehement audience, it’s definitely an important thing.”

Pattinson became a pinup as the angst-ridden Edward, but said he wasn’t worried he might be typecast as the perpetual brooding hero. “I’m not particularly brooding in my real life,” he said.

The actor has already been laying the ground for a career beyond “Twilight.” He played a 19th century French gigolo in “Bel Ami” and a billionaire with an existential crisis in David Cronenberg‘s “Cosmopolis,” although both films fared poorly at the box office earlier this year.

Next up is a drama, “Map to the Stars,” again with Cronenberg, and “The Rover,” a Western-style action movie set in the Australian desert.

“Everything I’ve signed up for now is very physical, because I feel like I’ve done quite a few things where I’m quite still. I’m trying to find people that are doing things that feel dangerous,” Pattinson said.

ROMANCE ON AND OFF SCREEN

Away from the series with its apple motif, symbolizing forbidden love, Pattinson’s fame has also been fueled by his off-screen romance with “Twilight” co-star Kristen Stewart, 22, who plays Bella Swan.

Their relationship was thrust into the spotlight in the summer when Stewart publicly admitted she had an affair with her married “Snow White and the Huntsman” director, Rupert Sanders.

The actress apologized in a rare, heartfelt public statement but the affair shocked “Twilight” fans. Pattinson and Stewart have since reconciled, and the paparazzi have spotted them together, but they have stayed mum on their relationship.

“I just try and avoid it,” Pattinson said when asked about the scrutiny of his personal life.

“I don’t think it’s good in terms of a career as an actor. I think being in gossip magazines – I don’t like the whole industry, I think it’s a lazy industry, and it’s a weird media consumer culture,” the actor said.

“(Success) is so much based on luck as an actor. No one knew that the audience would connect to the ‘Twilight’ series the way that they did … it’s just luck, you’ve got to do the things that interest you.”

For now, Pattinson is coming to terms with saying goodbye to the franchise.

“It sounds cheesy, but it’s been such a life-changing experience where you share a bond with people, it’s weird. I remember hearing about ‘Lord of the Rings,’ they all got tattoos … that’d be so funny, maybe we could get a little apple, a ‘tramp stamp’ with an apple,” the actor mused, laughing.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy, Editing by Jill Serjeant, Gary Hill)

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