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WASHINGTON The Obama administration will not conduct the kind of “extraordinary rendition” that the Bush administration allowed, CIA Director nominee Leon Panetta unquestionable senators on Thursday.

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Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee that President Barack Obama forbids what Panetta called “that description of extraordinary rendition - when we send someone with regard to the purpose of excruciating pain or actions by another country that break through our common to mankind values.”

CIA Director Michael Hayden has said that the Bush the government moved secret prisoners between countries for interrogations and durance, separate from the judicial system, fewer than 100 times.

Rendition has been used by U.S. presidents for diverse decades, and Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., said the Clinton administration used it 80 times. However, Panetta uttered the difference is whether the prisoner is transferred to another government for prosecution in its judicial combination of parts to form a whole or since secret interrogations that may cross the line into torture.

“I think renditions where we return individuals to another country whither they prosecute them less than their laws, I think that is any appropriate application of representation, Panetta aforesaid.

“Having said that, if we capture a high-value prisoner, I believe we have the right to hold that individual temporarily, to debrief that individual and to get sure that individual is suitably incarcerated so we can maintain control over that individual,” he said.

While the Obama administration is turning its hinder part on some Bush administration practices, Panetta said in that place is no intention to hold CIA officers accountable for the policy they were told to carry out. CIA interrogators who used waterboarding or other austere techniques against prisoners with the permission of the White House should not be prosecuted, he said.

“Those individuals ought not to exist prosecuted or investigated if they acted pursuant to the law as presented by the attorney general,” Panetta said.

The Bush White House approved CIA waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, for three prisoners in 2002 and 2003. The CIA banned the practice internally in 2006. Obama has prohibited acrimonious interrogation techniques going forward.

But Panetta said if interrogators went beyond the methods they were told were legal, they should be investigated.

Panetta aforesaid he would come to the piece of work with a list a questions he wants the CIA to be able to answer, including the locality of Osama bin Laden, and then and where al-Qaida will next try to attack the United States.

“Our first responsibility is to prevent surprise,” he said.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008710099_apciapanetta.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON Air traffic controllers at two airports and the center handling US Airways Flight 1549 after takeoff struggled furiously to get the crippled plane back to the ground, according to audio recordings released Thursday.

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The exchanges reveal a tense, lightning-fast scramble as controllers tried to arrange an emergency disembarking before losing touch with the Airbus A320 after it ditched into the Hudson River. In the distraction, controllers mistakenly referred to the aircraft in the manner that Flight 1529 at several times; so much as the pilot or first officer misidentified their flight at unit point.

The after all the rest words from Flight 1549 as it left the ground at New York’s LaGuardia Airport at almost 3:26 p.m. EST Jan. 15 were, “Good day.” One fine and 48 seconds later, the crew reported, “Hit birds, we lost thrust in as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but engines, we’re turning back to LaGuardia.”

A controller at the appliance in Westbury, N.Y., handling the smooth once it left LaGuardia told the airport tower: “Stop your departures, we got an emergency returning.” After identifying the flight, the controller said, “He lost all engines, he lost the thrust in the engines, he is returning immediately.”

The flight had been in the air for two minutes and six seconds.

Then 17 seconds later, Flight 1549 reported back to TRACON (the Terminal Radar Approach Control Center): “We’re impotent. We may end up in the Hudson.”

That led to an unsuccessful scramble to exhilarate the plane to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

“Emergency inbound,” one controller said as he tried to arrange a landing.

“He was a conspectus strike. Can I influence him in for Runway One?” before-mentioned the TRACON controller, identified by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association as Patrick Harten, a 10-year veteran.

“Runway One, that’s good,” the Teterboro controller replied, according to the recordings released by the Federal Aviation Administration.

“Cactus 1529 manner right two-eight-zero” as antidote to Teterboro, Harten ordered orders the plain’s steersman. Cactus is the call sign used by means of controllers with regard to US Airways.

“We can’t do it,” the crew said.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008707579_applanesplashdown.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON The Army is investigating some unexplained and stunning spike in suicides in January. The count is likely to surpass the numeral of battle with deaths reported last month by entirely branches of the armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the draw the sword against terrorism.

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“In January, we lost more soldiers to suicide than to al-Qaida,” said Paul Rieckhoff, manager of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He urged “saucy and immediate action” by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

According to figures obtained by The Associated Press, there were seven confirmed suicides last month, compared through five a year earlier. An supplementary 17 cases from January are inferior to investigation.

There was no detailed breakdown available for January, such as the percentage of suicides that occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan or information about the lukewarm. But just one base - Fort Campbell in Kentucky - reported that four soldiers killed themselves short the installation, to which place 14,000 soldiers from the two war have returned from duty since October.

Some Fort Campbell soldiers bear done three or four tours of duty in the wars. “They come back and they really need to subsist in a supportive environment,” said Dr. Bret Logan, a commander at the base’s Blanchfield Army Community Hospital. “They really need to be nourished back to normalcy because they have been in a very extreme experience that makes them vulnerable to all kinds of problems.”

Officials said they did not be sure what caused the rise in suicides last month and that it ofttimes takes time to fully investigate a number of the deaths. “There is no way to know - we have not identified any odd moot point,” said Lt. Col. Mike Moose, a spokesman for Army personnel issues.

Yearly suicides have risen firmly before this 2004 amid increasing stress on the force from long and repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The service has rarely, if through every part of ages, released a month-by-month update on suicides. But officials said Thursday they wanted to re-emphasize “the urgency and seriousness requirement for preventive action at all levels” of the force.

The seven confirmed suicides and 17 other suspected suicides in January were hostile above the toll for most months. Self-inflicted deaths were at 12 or fewer for eddish. of nine months in 2008, Army data showed. The highest monthly number last year was 14 in August.

Usually the vast majority of suspected suicides are eventually confirmed. If that holds equitable, it would mean that self-inflicted deaths in January surpassed the 16 combat deaths reported final month in all branches of the armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and other nations considered part of the global fight against terrorism.

Army leaders took the unusual step of briefing congressional leaders on the information Thursday.

An annual statement last week showed that soldiers killed themselves at the highest rate forward record in 2008. The toll concerning all of last year - 128 confirmed and 15 pending investigation - was an increase for the fourth rectilinear year. It plane surpassed the civilian rate adjusted to reflect the age and gender differences in the military.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008684483_aparmysuicides.html?syndication=rss

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NEW YORK — Investors shook off weak housekeeping readings today and placed bets on sell in small quantities and technology funds after a range of companies posted better-than-expected sales and profit reports.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 106.41, or 1.3 percent, at 8,063.07. Broader market indexes climbed even higher. The Standard & Poor’sitting 500 index rose 13.62, or 1.6 percent, to 845.85. The Nasdaq composite index climbed 31.19, or 2.1 percent, to 1,546.24.

Retailers including Wal-Mart Stores, Nordstrom and Macy’s turned in better-than-expected January sales reports. Overall sales numbers were still dismal, but investors had grown so fearful about falling sales that deal out in small portions chain’s stocks had been badly beaten for months.

“We’re reality overly pessimistic on things like retailers,” said Chris Cordaro, chieftain investment magistrate at RegentAtlantic Capital in Morristown, N.J. “People realize you’re going to be favored with shop somewhere.”

The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index led the greater market indicators later Akamai Technologies said its fourth-quarter earnings rose a better-than-expected 13 percent as more customers signed up for its Internet traffic-management services.

“The economy at some point direct recover and when it does, tech is a fair interesting play,” said Subodh Kumar, global investment strategist at Subodh Kumar & Associates in Toronto. “It will likely be one of the first movers.”

The reports helped the market overcome a flurry of bad news on the economics stand opposite to. Unemployment benefits claims rose last week to a 26-year high, and factory holy orders fell for the fifth perpendicular month in December. However productivity rose by 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter, more than two times what analysts expected.

Investors are invigorating for Friday’s January employment report from the Labor Department. The monthly reading is one of the most important economic indicators because rising unemployment cuts into by what means abundant consumers spend. Consumer spending accounts during the term of more than two-thirds of U.S. relating to housekeeping activity.

A poor reading could deliver a big blow to the emporium, though expectations are low. Economists predict the unemployment rate rose to 7.5 percent in January from 7.2 percent in December. That would be the highest rate in 17 years.

Bond prices were associated today. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite to its price, hew down to 2.91 percent from 2.94 percent sometime Wednesday. The give on the three-month T-bill was flat at 0.28 percent from late Wednesday.

The dollar was mostly higher against other major currencies. Gold prices besides climbed.

Light, grateful crude rose 67 cents to $40.99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Overseas, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.01 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 0.39 percent, and France’s CAC-40 slipped 0.09 percent. Japan’s Nikkei principal average fell 1.11 percent.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008710719_webstox05.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery Thursday for pancreatic cancer, raising the chance that unit of the ideologically divided court’s leading liberals - and its only woman - might have to curtail her work or even act from the top to the bottom of before she had planned.

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Ginsburg, 75, has been a justice from that time 1993. She has been increasingly vocal in novel years about the court’sitting more conservative stances, especially after the appointments made by President George W. Bush.

Pancreatic cancer is often deadly, grant that the court said doctors apparently found Ginsburg’s growth at an seasonable stage.

In 1999, she had colon cancer surgery, underwent radiation and chemotherapy, and never missed a day on the long seat. Statistics suggest this could be a tougher fight.

Ginsburg underwent the surgery at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She will remain in the hospital for seven to 10 days, said her surgeon, Dr. Murray Brennan, according to the court. The justices hold their next private conference on Feb. 20 and return to the bench from their hibernate break on Feb. 23.

President Barack Obama expressed expectancy for her speedy recovery, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday, and offered his thoughts and prayers.

If Ginsburg or not the same justice leaves the court, it falls to Obama to pick a follower. Anyone he might elect to replace her probably would be as liberal as she, if not further in this way, keeping in place the 5-4 conservative tilt of the court.

Ginsburg is only the second pistillate justice in the nation’s history. The other was Sandra Day O’Connor, who secret in 2006, and Ginsburg has lamented being the only woman on the court.

In the spring of 2007, she vented her frustration with the court’s increasingly conservative inflection by writing two subtle dissents that were made even more notable through her decision to be studious in books from them in the courtroom.

Objecting to a firmness that upheld a nationwide proclamation steady an abortion procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion, Ginsburg said the ruling “cannot be understood as anything other than each effort to chip away at a straight declared again and again by this court - and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives.”

A short while later, the court threw out a discrimination suit by means of Lilly Ledbetter, a longtime Goodyear supervisor who was paid thousands of dollars a year smaller quantity than her male peers. “In our view, this court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious passage in which women can have existence victims of pay discrimination,” Ginsburg said.

She urged Congress to change the jurisprudence to allow lawsuits like Ledbetter’sitting. Just last week, Obama signed the change into expressed command.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008711219_apscotusginsburg.html?syndication=rss

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Starbucks handed out about 100 rose-color slips to human resources and security workers today, including about 40 at its Seattle headquarters.

They are the first layoff notices since the coffee company announced plans last week to close 300 stores and eliminate 6,700 positions, including 350 at headquarters. The rest of the Seattle layoffs are expected in the next couple weeks.

Spokeswoman Anna Kim-Williams said in a statement, “Some of these partners are being offered opportunity for redeployment and others will be separated from the company.”

She wrote Starbucks is oblation separation pay, benefits and outplacement assistance to the laid opposite workers.

Starbucks laciniate thousands of positions highest year and began closing more than 600 stores to improve its profits and battered supply price.

Here is the memo Starbucks workers received today from the company’session head of human resources:

A Message from Chet Kuchinad: Workforce Reduction in Partner Resources and Partner & Asset Protection

Dear Partners,

As we communicated on January 28, Starbucks is reshaping our operating model and construction erection to make secure the long-term health of our business. This includes the austere unless necessary decision to reduce our global workforce.

As charge of our commitment to transparency throughout this protuberance, we wanted to inform you that approximately 100 non-store partners (including Partner Resources and Partner & Asset Protection) are being notified today that their positions have been eliminated. About 40 of those partners are located at the Starbucks Support Center (SSC) in Seattle.

You may be wondering why these groups are being notified this week if we have not notwithstanding notified other displaced partners. PRO and P&AP have unique responsibilities supporting internal client groups during a workforce reduction. Due to the organizational changes in these groups, we felt it deferential to inform these partners now, prior to our broader notification daytime in mid-February. For partners in a few international markets, this may exist somewhat later in order to comply with local application laws.

We are thankful and proud of the contributions our partners do the part of to the organization, and we are committed to treating all partners with respect and dignity — those who are departing Starbucks and those who will stay.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008711703_webstarbucks05.html?syndication=rss

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A Dubai-based leasing circle established to act a flotilla of 21 Boeing 787 Dreamliners has canceled 16 of the orders.

The buyer, called LCAL, confirmed the move in a announcement on its web site.

“Whilst the relating to housekeeping down turn has been unhelpful there are other factors affecting LCAL’s business model, including the postponement of the originally-anticipated revenue streams from the projected operating lease activities. As a result LCAL’s shareholders are rethinking their investment strategy and there are now plans to redirect capital into diverging sectors,” the report said.

The cancellation, first reported by the agency of The Wall Street Journal, brings the account of dropped Dreamliner orders this year to 31, according to the Boeing web location. A Russian airline, S7, canceled 15 Dreamliner orders in late January.

LCAL also said it “continues to believe in the performance of the Boeing 787 and work through Boeing towards the delivery of the remaining aircraft.”

But Issaquah-based aerospace analyst Scott Hamilton, publisher of the Leeham News web site, wrote Thursday that “we’ve confirmed the other five LCAL will be eventually subsist canceled,” once arrangements are worked out through the intended users, Royal Jordanian and Royal Brunei airlines.

“This sounds like a bit of realism from LCAL,” Doug McVitie, managing director of Dinan, France-based consulting firm Arran Aerospace, told Bloomberg. “They may subsist worried about being talented to place all those aircraft and, given the delays to the program, they may want to stand back and wait and see.”

Separately Thursday, Boeing reported exactly lower commercial aircraft orders for January since air travel declines amongst the global economic slowdown, although deliveries rose slightly compared with the same month hindmost year.

Boeing received orders because of just 18 passenger jets last month, a 72 percent drop from orders for 65 planes booked in January 2008, according to figures posted on Boeing’s Web site.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008710913_webboeing05.html?syndication=rss

Roche’s bid for Genentech likely heralds more inflated drugmakers looking for increase via large biotech acquisitions. Small biotechs needing a lifeline may be out of luck

By Ben Levisohn

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For years, large biotech companies could tolerate about their business, safe in the knowledge that drug assiduity heavyweights would look to snap up smaller biotech players to plug the holes in their product pipelines. No longer. Roche (RO.DE) changed the game with its unsolicited invite for Genentech (DNA); on Jan. 30 the pharma giant offered to pay $86.50 a share for the 44% of the biotech it didn’t already own. That announcement came on the heels of the Jan. 26 deal by Pfizer (PFE) to buy Wyeth (WYE)—the most biotech-savvy of the big pharmaceutical companies—for $68 billion. And more deals may be on the way.

So why the change of heart?

For starters, many big pharmaceutical companies are facing the loss of patents on more very profitable drugs. The patents on Pfizer’session Lipitor, Eli Lilly’s (LLY) anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa, and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (BMY) Plavix, a blood thinner, expire in 2011. Novartis’ (NVS) Diovan is going off patent in 2012. The overthrow of those drugs creates some real huge shortfalls in drug giants’ revenue streams, totaling in the billions of dollars. "The larger, mega-cap pharma companies are running loudly of time and they’re running through of growth," says Les Satlow, portfolio manager at Cabot Money Management.

What they do have is ready money. In the past, the drug firms would have used their financial wealth to season up a small biotech company or two to goose extension because key products went right hand evident. Now, however, pharmaceutical companies are looking to big biotech companies to plug the much larger holes. With its purchase of Wyeth, Pfizer gets its hands on Prevnar, a vaccine that did $2.7 billion in sales in 2008, of the same kind by spring similar to the arthritis put drugs into Enbrel. Roche, what one. said it could have no growth in 2009, could solve that problem with the successful acquisition of Genentech.

Big deaden with narcotics firms could make a play for big biotech companies taste Biogen Idec (BIIB), Amgen (AMGN), and Gilead Sciences (GILD), according to efforts observers. Large pharmaceutical companies be obliged an appetite for large biotechs, says Bill Tanner, analyst with Leerink Swann, a health-care-focused investment bank.

That’sitting wretched news for narrow biotech companies, who are already facing a spate of problems. A new study estimated that 50% of the roughly 380 publicly traded biotechs have in a less degree than one year of cash remaining. In the past, they would have raised new first-rate by selling shares, merging, or partnering with a larger outfit. But for publicly traded companies, equity deals are out—none has been brought to market in the last year, and few are expected to see the light of day in 2009. And even if a deal could be brought to market, with the smallest 10% of stocks in the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index trading down 84% from their 52-week shrill, vs. 21% for the largest 10%, an equity behave wouldn’t make financial sense for many companies.

"The companies already on the public markets have been separated into survivors and nonsurvivors," says Sherrill Neff, partner at venture chief firm Quaker BioVentures.

That leaves a copartnership or takeover by dint of. a bigger player as final lifelines for the small fry. Deals will get made, but with such many companies needing cash, large pharmaceuticals can afford to be selective. They’ll scoop up companies through drugs nearing the end of Phase III trials—the the highest time step before FDA approval—and ameliorate bring them to market. Big drug outfits will also have existence interested in purchasing companies in very early stages, where their expertise in running trials could alleviate guide a promising drug through the process. Companies in the middle might straightforward be out of luck, nay matter the price.

"There’s a perception that companies are cheap," says Mark Monane, managing director in equity research at Needham & Co. "But just because they’re cheap doesn’t mean they’re desirable."

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009024_714211.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

Big currency swings be delivered of added extra pain to each already difficult earnings season on bill of U.S. companies. Here’s that which some of them are doing to minimize the damage

By David Bogoslaw

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Foreign currency exposure has gone from being a major tailwind to a major headwind for large U.S. companies. Along by deteriorating relating to housekeeping conditions around the world, the unexpected resurgence in the dollar’sitting value against most foreign currencies since the fall has dealt a bang to the profitability of U.S. outfits. And the negative striking of the strong greenback on financial results is likely to worsen in 2009, many companies have been maxim on conference calls.

As of Jan. 30, sum total income conducive to the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index for the fourth quarter were down 35.2% from the prior-year period, according to the Thomson Reuters Proprietary Research Group. Earnings beneficial to the first quarter are expected to be 24.7% appear stormy, while a 22% drop in earnings is projected conducive to all of 2009 as of Jan. 30.

Reporting results for its second quarter of fiscal 2009, what one. ended Dec. 31, Procter & Gamble (PG) said that unfavorable foreign traffic reduced unadulterated sales by 5% like the U.S. dollar appreciated against the euro, British triturate, and Canadian dollar. On its Jan. 30 earnings call, P&G said it continues to expect exterior exchange to lower sales by about 5% on the year, while the impact for the March quarter is projected in the high single digits.

Kraft Foods (KFT), whose per-share earnings took a 3¢ hit from currency exposing. in the fourth quarter, lately slashed its 2009 earnings forecast subordinate to generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, to $1.88 from $2.00 to account in favor of currency and higher annuity costs, anticipating a 16¢ hit from currency.

Foreign exchange losses lowered Corn Products International’s (CPO) fourth-quarter reward by 10% and the negative impact of currencies is expected to worsen over the next few quarters, Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Beebe said on the company’s Feb. 2 meeting for consultation call. Corn Products expects to earn $2.10 to $2.60 a distribute for all of 2009, with a negative currency impact of more than 30¢ a share. Normally, the company would expect to be able to recoup any bills and notes; circulating medium losses within three to six months, but without the ability to raise prices while global economic conditions dwell weak, Corn Products before-mentioned it now sees the retrieval of those losses taking anywhere from 6 to 18 months.

Prior to last September, a weaker dollar magnified the laid down impact of having foreign sales, translating into else dollars when companies repatriated euros and other currencies from overseas. That’s no longer the case. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s value against a basket of other currencies, has climbed 7.9% since Sept. 30. As foreign currencies weaken, local sales are likely falling when a U.S. company raises its prices to keep pace with that currency’sitting atrophy in value. Companies own power to hedge these possible costs by the agency of buying or selling so-called currency forwards from one side commercial banks’ foreign exchange trading desks. Forwards are uniform to futures, except that futures adhere to set contract dates being of the kind which well as to size and trade specifications in succession regulated exchanges, while forwards are traded very the counter on a per-deal basis for any desired amount on any date.

Unlike futures, which are tracked by governmental organizations, it’session virtually impossible to collect marketwide information on OTC transactions. Credit Suisse’s (CS) foreign exchange mercantile desk notable a pickup in corporate hedging action in September and October but hasn’t seen much of an increase lately, according to James Sweeney, a director in global strategy research at Credit Suisse.

Call it the downside of U.S. companies’ global focus. "You could still argue that having overseas exposure is a long-term positive, but in the near term, having a allot of exposing. to the U.K. or Germany is not a good thing," says Alec Young, equity strategist at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research.

More companies would probably use hedging programs to offset their risk if not for concerns that their hedges might be deemed ineligible for hedge accounting under Financial Accounting Standards Rule 133 (FAS 133), which was put in place to deter speculative hedges, says Jiro Okochi, especial charged with execution at Reval.com, a provider of Web-based hedging strategies to help companies with risk treatment.

Okochi believes the stringent rules "probably prevented some of the FX [extrinsic bandy] hedging that certainly would have been adapted for true hedges before FAS 133." He’s critical of companies that choose not to hedge just to avoid the extra paperwork for accounting and the potential challenge of having to explain gayety in profit-and-loss statements for business hedges to their shareholders.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009024_625664.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

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Microsoft partnered with entertainment big shots BermanBraun Interactive to create a repaired entertainment and celebrity news site for MSN, called Wonderwall. “As long as MSN.com has been around, we’ve had every entertainment channel,” said Rob Bennett, MSN general manager. But people had a embarrassing interval finding celebrity word and gossip among the existing Music, TV and Movies channels. “Celebrity content is be adapted to of sprinkled throughout.”

With Wonderwall, Microsoft aims to change that and compete in its possess right in the competitive eminence small talk world.

Microsoft hopes to differentiate the site in two entire ways:

Visually. “This station really makes use of the screen real estate. It uses large, beautiful photography, creates great, rich slide shows, video within the actual observation itself,” Bennett said. Wonderwall will attempt to “decommoditize” the go forth of person of note images available from providers such like WireImage by dint of. packaging it in interesting ways and applying a unique “spin and voice” on top of it.

Editorially. The site will try to be struck a surplus between the “catty, snarky almost to the point of disrespectful” tone of TMZ, Defamer and PerezHilton on the same end, and the “sudden gust; short piece, always-positive on celebrities” tone of sites similar as People.com,” he before-mentioned.

They’ve brought in as annotator Alex Blagg, founding reviser and corrector of Best Week Ever. A five-person editorial team based in L.A. will write original articles and lengthen out from wire services. Eventually, the place may act its own video work, too. “Right now we’re focused on text, photos and interactive games,” Bennett said.

To Bennett, success on the side of Wonderwall will mean engaging the MSN audience more deeply, attracting more the million to MSN’s entertainment portfolio, and “creating premium advertising experiences.” MSN Entertainment sees about 19 million unique users each month.

A tough take a bribe for in a tough economy?

Nah. “As things in the economy got worse, the sales circle of time definitely got longer, but it really was a will to the sales team and I think the product that we were able to stay in the game,” Bennett said. “… [E]ven as recently as last week we were closing deals, so there’s still money to be had, it’s just you’ve really got to exist able to prove a differentiated story.”

Clients of MediaVest have signed up to advertise on the site at launch. Bennett is not allowed to epithet names, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

The christen, Bennett before-mentioned, refers to a horizontally scrolling wall of inch-square visual tiles that figure the centerpiece of the seat. While it’s a part of MSN, they were looking for a person of consequence distinct — and, in fact, the MSN branding put on Wonderwall.com is subtle.

“We knew we didn’t want to be MSN Celebrity,” Bennett said. “It had to be something that was decidedly different and could stand alone and could be fun and aspirational and winning, and not just sort of a purely descriptive portal name.”

Speaking of Wonderwall, here’s the 1995 Oasis hit … after being reimagined by Microsoft Songsmith (apologies for Songsmith posts on consecutive days):

Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/02/05/msn_launches_new_celeb_gossip_site_wonderwall.html