Ex-Microsoft CEO Ballmer buys NBA's LA Clippers for $2 billion - Reuters

By Ronald Grover and Eric Kelsey

LOS ANGELES Fri May 30, 2014 4:27am EDT

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer answers questions at the company's annual shareholder meeting in Bellevue, Washington in this file photo taken November 19, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jason Redmond/Files

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) CEO Steve Ballmer has purchased the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers franchise for $2 billion, a record for a professional basketball team, sole trustee Shelly Sterling announced on Friday.

In a news release from Greenberg Glusker, Sterling's counsel, she said she had signed a binding contract to sell the team to Ballmer on behalf of the The Sterling Family Trust, which owns the club.

"I am delighted that we are selling the team to Steve, who will be a terrific owner. We have worked for 33 years to build the Clippers into a premiere NBA franchise. I am confident that Steve will take the team to new levels of success."

The agreement will need to be approved by the National Basketball Association's Board of Governors before it is finalized. The NBA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

"I will be honored to have my name submitted to the NBA Board of Governors for approval as the next owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.  I love basketball," Ballmer said in a statement. "And I intend to do everything in my power to ensure that the Clippers continue to win – and win big – in Los Angeles."

On Thursday, Ballmer outbid two groups, one led by media mogul David Geffen that offered $1.6 billion and included TV talk show maven Oprah Winfrey and Oracle Corp (ORCL.N) CEO Larry Ellison, a source close to the process told Reuters. A group of Los Angeles investors also bid $1.2 billion for the team.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch acted as the financial advisor in the deal, Sterling's statement said.

The Clippers came up for sale after the NBA banned owner Donald Sterling for life because of racist remarks he made in a recorded conversation that was leaked last month to entertainment news website TMZ.com.

Donald Sterling's attorney, Maxwell Blecher, told The New York Times earlier that he would have to approve the sale. Blecher did not immediately respond to request for comment on Friday.

Ballmer's winning bid was raised from an initial $1.8 billion offer made earlier on Thursday, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. If approved, the deal would be second only to the $2.15 billion paid in 2012 for baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers.

"It's no wonder the prices are so high," said sports consultant Ed Desser, a former president of NBA Television and New Media Ventures. "There just aren't enough teams for all the billionaires who want them."

Sterling, a Los Angeles-area real estate developer, paid $12.5 million in 1981 for the Clippers, which were then located in San Diego.

Ballmer, 58, who retired as Microsoft CEO in February, remains on the board and still owns about 4 percent of the Redmond, Washington-based software giant, worth $13.4 billion.

Last year, he joined a group that unsuccessfully bid on the Sacramento Kings basketball team. A long-time basketball fan, until a few years ago he played a regular pickup game with other Microsoft colleagues at a public gym near the Microsoft campus.[ID:nL1N0EH1W7]

It is unclear how the team's potential sale will affect a June 3 hearing the NBA scheduled at which Donald Sterling can address the accusations against him. At that meeting, the owners could force him to sell the team on a vote by 23 of the remaining 29 owners, the NBA has said.

Maxwell Blecher, Sterling's lawyer, said in an interview with CNN that his client is prepared to file suit to fight the charges, but that he intended to wait for communication from the NBA before deciding when and whether to do so.

(Additional reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle, writing by Curtis Skinner,; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Spellers Share Big Prize as Co-Champions at National Spelling Bee - NBCNews.com

"Sdrucciola." "Augenphilologie."

The last two competitors on stage at the Scripps National Spelling Bee fought each other with big words — one letter at a time — but in the end, camaraderie was the word of the day as the two teenagers became co-champions.

"It's a dream come true," Sriram Hathwar, 14, of Painted Post, New York, said, as the two hoisted the trophy.

"I'm even happier that I'm a co-champion," Ansun Sunjoe, 13, of Fort Worth, Texas, added.

It was the first time the Bee crowned co-champions since 1962. Nettie Crawford and Michael Day both won that year.

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Thursday night, the judges declared the boys winners after six rounds of vocabulary dueling. The final word Sujoe spelled was "feuilleton" and the last for Hathwar was "stichomythia."

Earlier on Thursday, "ecribellate" and "taglioni" were just two of the words that began whittling down the finalists' field in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

A dozen spellers, ranging in age from 11 to 15 and from hometowns from California to Jamaica, advanced to the championship finals. Only one repeat finalist was among the group.

The big shocker in Thursday's semifinals came when top contender Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, was eliminated.

Twelve-year-old Vanya, a three-time finalist whose older sister was the 2009 bee winner, correctly spelled both words onstage but didn't get a high enough score on two computerized spelling and vocabulary tests to advance.

Evan Vucci / AP

Ansun Sujoe, 13, of Fort Worth, Texas, left, and Sriram Hathwar, 14, of Painted Post, N.Y., celebrate after being named co-champions of the National Spelling Bee, on Thursday, May 29, 2014, in Oxon Hill, Md.

— Becky Bratu and Elizabeth Chuck and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

First published May 29 2014, 5:55 PM

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Ukraine: we have 'completely cleared' rebels from parts of east - Telegraph.co.uk

Repeating charges that Russia was carrying out "special operations" in the east of Ukraine, Mykhailo Koval, the country's acting defence minister, said Ukrainian forces would continue with military operations in border areas "until these regions begin to live normally, until there is peace."

Speaking after 14 servicemen, including a general, were killed on Thursday when rebels shot down an army helicopter, Mr Koval, said: "Our armed forces have completed their assigned missions and completely clear the southern and western parts of the Donetsk region and the northern part of the Lugansk region from the separatists,"

They said about seven battalions remained, amounting to a couple of thousand troops. US officials had estimated as many as 40,000 Russian forces had been aligned along the border with a restive eastern Ukraine that has been wracked with violence between government security forces and pro-Russian separatists.

The defense officials spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the precise numbers.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel didn't provide any details to reporters traveling with him at the start of a 12-day overseas trip, but he called the withdrawal promising.

"They are not where they need to be and won't be until all of their troops that they positioned along that border a couple of months ago are gone," Hagel said.

"We do know that thousands of Russian troops have been pulled back and are moving away. But we also know that there are still thousands of Russian troops still there that have not yet moved," Hagel said.

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Quotations in the News - Washington Post

"I just think that philanthropy is a fancy way to say that you care about others and that you want to serve others. And that's been a part of me for as long as I can remember." — Priscilla Chan, wife of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, after they announced they are donating $120 million to the San Francisco Bay Area's public school system.

___

"They're telling me he should stand back and let them take his team because his opinion on that particular day was not good, was not popular? That his team should be stripped from him? It doesn't make sense. He's going to fight." — Bobby Samini, attorney for Los Angeles Clippers co-owner Donald Sterling, after his wife Shelly Sterling agreed to sell her stake in the NBA team to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion.

___

"The competition was against the dictionary, not against each other. I'm happy to share this trophy with him." — Sriram Hathwar after he and Ansun Sujoe were declared co-champions in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Anchor vs. Fugitive: How Brian Williams played it safe with Ed Snowden - Fox News

May 27, 2014: Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, right, speaks to NBC News anchor Brian Williams, left, during an NBC Exclusive interview.ap

NBC's prime-time special with Ed Snowden made for fascinating television, but I must admit I came away frustrated.

If you wanted to learn more about Snowden's thoughts, desires and dreams, his philosophy of spying and his rationalization for what he did, much of that was on display.

As a personality profile of a guy who changed the global debate over surveillance but remains a shadowy figure, the program worked quite well. The 29-year-old data whiz is smart and articulate.

But he is a fugitive from American justice, and I think Brian Williams missed a golden opportunity.

Williams is easy to watch, a good conversationalist, and funny as hell, as his appearances on "SNL" and the "Daily Show" make clear. Landing Snowden was a great get, even if it was done through an alliance with Glenn Greenwald, who was also interviewed, and obviously Snowden felt confident that his interlocutor would be fair.

But I kept waiting for Williams to pin him down: You knew you were breaking the law, and now you don't want to face the consequences of your actions? Do you think you should get to pick and choose which laws you follow? If you think this was a great act of conscience, why do you deserve to be let off scot-free?

In short, there never came a time when the anchor pressed the accused spy and tried to knock him off his talking points.

Yes, Williams asked the obligatory questions:

"A lot of people say you have badly damaged your country."

"When the president and others have made the point that you should have gone through channels, become a whistle-blower and not pursued the route you did, what's your response?"

And:

"In your mind, though, are you blameless?"

"Have you done, as you look at this, just a good thing? Have you performed, as you see it, a public service?"

"On the range between ticker-tape parade and life sentence, what do you think ought to happen to you and if and when you return to the United States?"

Williams let Snowden give lengthy answers, almost never jumping in to interrupt. Often he just went on to the next question.

Now everyone has his own style, I get it. Brian's is more conversational. And there is the tyranny of time. The more he drills down on one point, the less time he has for Snowden's answers on spying, hacking, 9/11 and other subjects the audience might find interesting.

What's noteworthy is that Williams sometimes added critical caveats taped after the interview. After an exchange in which Snowden was asked about leaking secret military information, Williams told the audience: "Just for clarification here, note that Snowden didn't deny turning over military secrets. He asserted instead they wouldn't be published." Another way to handle that would have been to tell Snowden, "you didn't answer my question."

Snowden, who shared the bulk of his NSA documents with Greenwald and the Washington Post's Bart Gellman, invoked the media in defending his massive leaks.

"That's the reason that journalists have been required by their agreement with me as the source, although they could obviously break that or do whatever they want," he said. "But I demanded that they agree to consult with the government to make sure no individuals or specific harms could be caused by any of that reporting."

Mediaite had some fun digging out Greenwald's harsh assessment of Williams after the anchor's one-year anniversary special on the killing of Usama bin Laden:

"This bin Laden show. was hagiography in its purest, most propagandistic, and most subservient form. This is typically the role Williams plays — he cleanses and glorifies American government actions, especially military actions, with his reverent, soothing, self-important baritone — but he really outdid himself here."

Glorifies? And what's wrong with his baritone? Presumably Glenn's opinion has improved since then.

Perhaps Williams faced the dilemma that part of the country sees Snowden as a traitor as part of the country views him as a hero, so he felt he needed to split the difference. If so, he succeeded.

Click for more from Media Buzz. 

Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz.

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Police had not seen Elliot Rodger's videos when they determined he was not a ... - Washington Post

The police in Santa Barbara knew about, but never saw those videos.

Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies who determined Elliot Rodger was not a threat to himself or others only weeks before his shooting spree in Isla Vista, Calif., knew he had posted the alarming videos online, but didn't actually watch them, officials said Thursday.

When four deputies, a University of California at Santa Barbara police officer and a dispatcher-in-training went to his apartment for a welfare check April 30 after being contacted by his parents, they asked him about the videos, according to a statement released by the sheriff's office.

Rodger, 22 — described as shy and polite — told them the videos he posted on YouTube were simply a way for him to express himself because he was struggling to fit in socially.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

"Based upon the information available to them at the time," the statement continued, "sheriff's deputies concluded that Rodger was not an immediate threat to himself or others, and that they did not have cause to place him on an involuntary mental health hold, or to enter and search his residence. Therefore, they did not view the videos or conduct a weapons check on Rodger."

One of the deputies called Rodger's mother and, after briefing her on the interaction, passed the phone to Rodger, officials said. Rodger "told her he was fine and that he would call her later."

Deputies then gave Rodger contact information about local services he could use "if he needed help," and left. The interaction lasted about 10 minutes, officials said.

The statement, however, does not say why police didn't view the videos or whether the deputies knew anything about what was in them, the Associated Press reported.

Rodger wrote he had three semiautomatic weapons hidden in his bedroom at the time:

I tactfully told them that it was all a misunderstanding, and they finally left. If they had demanded to search my room … that would have ended everything. For a few horrible seconds I thought it was all over. When they left, the biggest wave of relief swept over me. It was so scary. It was all because of the videos.

Rodger also wrote that he immediately removed most of the videos from YouTube.

The sequence of events released in Thursday's statement is different from a statement last Sunday from sheriff's office spokesman Kelly Hoover, who said "the sheriff's office was not aware of any videos until after the shooting rampage occurred," the AP reported.

An e-mail seeking comment on why the previous statement said deputies were unaware of the videos was not immediately returned to The Washington Post on Friday morning.

 The LA Times reported some have questioned why police failed to view the videos.

"If somebody was concerned about them enough to report them it would seem to me to be part of the checkup," Ann Eldridge, vice president of Santa Barbara's chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said. Others say it may not have made a difference.

Rick Wall, a former Los Angeles police captain who oversaw that department's mental health team, told the LA Times that although seeing the videos may not have stopped Rodger's rampage, it would have become part a police investigation.

He also told the AP the amount of time police spent talking to Rodger's mother while gathering details of his history was critical in understanding why she was concerned about her son.

"That's going to be the telling piece and where you're going to get the breakdown on the guy's story," Wall said. "Talking to somebody for 10 minutes, you may or may not get the ability to conduct a proper evaluation."

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Former LulzSec Hacker Turned Informant Avoids Further Jail Time - KPBS

Avoiding further jail time, Hector Xavier Monsegur — a hacktivist legend — walked out of a federal court house in Manhattan on Tuesday.

The AP reports that U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska said Monsegur's cooperation helped disrupt hundreds of cyber attacks and helped disrupt the hacker activist group Anonymous and essentially marked the end of LulzSec.

As we reported back in 2012, Monsegur, who is also known as "Sabu," pleaded guilty to carrying out cyber attacks against companies such as Paypal, eBay and MasterCard.

His arrest — and subsequent revelation that he had become a government informant — was a punch in the gut to LulzSec and Anonymous, because Monsegur was seen a kind of "hacker demigod" in that world.

Today, because of his cooperation with investigators, Preska sentenced him to time served plus one year supervised release. Daniel Stucket, a reporter for Vice, posted video of Monsegur walking free, while smoking a cigarette.

Anonymous, as you might imagine, was not very happy today. On one of their Twitter feeds, they called for the release of Jeremy Hammond, a powerful cybercriminal the FBI caught through Sabu. They called Sabu a "snitch" and many other things we could not repeat in this space.

But here, in the form of a retweet from @YourAnonNews, is a the main argument in the hacktivist space:

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/

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Lawmakers, mourners weigh in on California rampage - Chron.com

GOLETA, Calif. (AP) — Thousands mourned the deaths of their classmates at a California university, lawmakers proposed ways to prevent the next round of deaths, and the rampant presence of guns were at the forefront of both discussions as a rampage that left seven dead reverberated across the state.

Richard Martinez, whose son, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, 20, died in the attacks, spoke at Tuesday's memorial on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, emphasizing that he did not speak for all the victims' relatives or even his former wife, Michaels-Martinez's mother.

But he urged students to fight for tougher gun laws, and placed the blame on what he called the inaction of politicians.

"They have done nothing, and that's why Chris died," Martinez said. "It's almost become a normal thing for us to accept this."

He got much of the crowd to repeatedly chant "Not one more," in reference to such massacres, a phrase he shouted before reporters and television cameras the day after Friday's massacre.

The school canceled classes and declared a day of mourning and reflection, four days after the shootings and stabbings in the Isla Vista community by 22-year-old community college student Elliot Rodger, who had posted an Internet video outlining his plan to slaughter as many people as possible.

Rodger had legally obtained three semi-automatic handguns and still had 400 unspent rounds of ammunition when he shot himself to death, authorities said.

On the same day, two California Assembly members proposed legislation that would create a gun violence restraining order that could be sought from a judge by law enforcement at the request of family members and friends.

"When someone is in crisis, the people closest to them are often the first to spot the warning signs, but almost nothing can now be done to get back their guns or prevent them from buying more," said Democratic Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner of Berkeley, who sponsored the measure with Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara.

Currently, therapists can tell authorities when they fear a client is at risk of committing a violent act. However, there is no prohibition on firearms ownership unless someone has been involuntarily committed for mental health treatment.

Another proposal involves establishing statewide protocols for law enforcement officers who are called to check on mentally troubled people.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, suggested that authorities should be required as part of such welfare visits to check whether a person has purchased weapons instead of just talking to the person.

Additional steps could include searching the individual's surroundings and talking to roommates, neighbors and relatives, he said.

"There is a lot we can do to prevent these kinds of horrific events in the future," said Steinberg, who has spent much of his time in the Legislature addressing mental health concerns.

State senators spent 35 minutes at the state Capitol eulogizing the students killed in the weekend violence and expressing frustration that such rampages continue despite previous efforts to end the problem.

The rampage came hours after Rodger emailed a lengthy manifesto to his parents, therapists and others, and a month after sheriff's deputies had visited him on a welfare check after his parents became concerned about his postings on YouTube.

At Tuesday's memorial, Martinez also read statements from the families of two other slain students, Cheng Yuan Hong and Weihan Wang, both 20, in which they asked for prayers or blessings for the families of the victims and the killer.

"May we together create a peaceful world and let hatred be gone with the wind," the Hong family statement said.

UC President Janet Napolitano paid tribute to the victims, saying "each of the victims left a mark on the world" and "as long as we hold them in our hearts, they are not gone."

"All died much too young, but it's important that we do not let the arithmetic of this atrocity define them," she said.

___

Thompson reported from Sacramento.

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Edward Snowden: I was a trained spy, not just a computer analyst - Telegraph.co.uk

"I was trained as a spy, in the sort of the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover, overseas pretending to work in a job that I'm not and even being assigned a name that was not mine," Snowden told NBC during an interview recorded last week in Russia.

"I'm a technical expert. I don't work with people, I don't recruit agents, what I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I've done that at all levels from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top."

He has received asylum in Russia.

Snowden said "the (US) government might deny these things," but claimed his total experience working with different government agencies shows that he was more than a low level analyst.

"I developed sources and methods for keeping our information and people secure in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world," he said.

"So when they say I'm a low level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about - I'd say it's somewhat misleading."

Source: APTN

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Google unveils its own self-driving cars - BBC News

Google is starting to build its own self-driving car, rather than modifying vehicles built by other manufacturers.

The car will have a stop-go button but no controls, steering wheel or pedals.

It will seat two people and will have an electric propulsion. At the start, its speed will be limited to 25mph (40km/h) to help ensure safety.

It will depend on Google's road maps, built specifically for the programme, and tested on the company's current fleet of vehicles.

The BBC's Jack Stewart spoke about the car.

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