Facebook to Set Final IPO Pricing $34 to $38

Facebook Inc. FB 0.00% is nearing the last step before its landmark initial public offering by finalizing the price for its shares later Thursday.

The social network earlier this week raised the price range for its IPO to $34 to $38 a share, from $28 to $35 a share, in a sign of investor appetite for the offering. The initial price range put Facebook's valuation at $77 billion to $96 billion, but that rises to $93 billion to $104 billion under the new range as investor interest ramps up.

At a potential offering size of $18.4 billion, Facebook would become the second-largest U.S. IPO of all time behind Visa Inc.'s V -0.45% 2008 offering worth $19.65 billion, according to Dealogic. It could exceed Visa if the share price ultimately lands at $41 a share or higher.

Facebook's IPO is a crowning moment for Silicon Valley's latest tech boom. Last year, Web companies from LinkedIn Corp., LNKD -5.89% Groupon Inc. GRPN -4.75% and Zynga Inc. ZNGA -0.96% went public in the first sustained drumbeat of Internet offerings for years.

That has continued this year, with Internet companies such as Yelp Inc. going public, while enterprise-technology companies such as Splunk Inc. also staged strong IPOs. Other Web companies that are still closely held, such as Twitter Inc. and Dropbox Inc., are viewed as possible IPO candidates in the future.

Facebook said Wednesday it would boost the size of its IPO by 25%, or about 100 million shares, as early investors sell as much as $3.8 billion in additional shares. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., GS +0.19% Tiger Global Management and Facebook director Peter Thiel—who was one of the social network's first investors—more than doubled the amount of stock they plan to sell.

Gaddafi dead and final words:'Do you know what is right or wrong?'

 

 Gaddafi's final words:'Do you know what is right or wrong?'
Gaddafi says: 'What are you doing? It's not allowed in Islamic law. What you are doing is forbidden.

'What you're doing is wrong, guys. Do you know what is right or wrong?'
As they continued to drag the 69-year-old through the street he whispered: "What are you doing? It's haraam [forbidden].

"It's not allowed in Islamic law. Haraam.

"What you are doing is forbidden in Islam!"
A bloodied and beaten Moammar Khadafy asked the fighters who captured him "Do you know right from wrong?" in what could well have been the final words of the ousted Libyan dictator.
New video footage emerged Friday showing the former strongman apparently in his last moments, surrounded and pleading for his life, repeatedly telling the mob swarming around him, "What you are doing is forbidden in Islamic law."

Dead bodies of

Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mo'tassim

The young men scream 'Muammar, you dog!' as their former leader wipes at blood covering the left side of his head, neck and left shoulder.
Gaddafi gestures to the young men to be patient, and says 'What's going on?' as he wipes fresh blood from his temple and glances at his palm.
A young fighter later is shown carrying a boot and screaming, 'This is Muammar's shoe! This is Muammar's shoe! Victory! Victory!'
'Keep him alive, keep him alive!' someone shouts.
Another rebel screams: 'God is great. God is omnipotent.' And as Gaddafi begs for mercy, a fighter says: 'Shut up, you dog.' The recording then ends.
Various cell phone videos of Gaddafi’s last moments have been documented, showing the wounded and disoriented ex-dictator being shuffled through the streets of Sirte.
In one of the videos, Gaddafi asks his rebel captors, “What did I do to you?”
“Do you know right from wrong?” he questions.
'Do you know right from wrong?' Ironic last-known words of Gaddafi
A statement confirmed NATO aircraft struck 11 pro-Gaddafi military vehicles, which were among a heavily-armed convoy of 75 vehicles that was transporting Gaddafi away from Sirte "at high speed" at around 8:30 a.m. local time Thursday.
NATO officials added, "We later learned from open sources and Allied intelligence that Gaddafi was in the convoy and that the strike likely contributed to his capture."
Meanwhile a Libyan freedom fighter has recounted the dramatic moments when he was directed to an injured Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte.
A high-pitched hysterical scream. Gaddafi then goes out of view and gunshots ring out that shows Gaddafi dead on the ground. He has clearly been killed.
The ambulance driver, Ali Jaghdoun, said Gaddafi was dead when he picked him up and he then drove the body to the city of Misrata. ' I didn't try to revive him because he was already dead, Jaghdoun said.
Gaddafi's golden gun was stripped from him. He also had a silver gun.
The irony of his plea would not be lost on the thousands of Libyans who suffered under Gaddafi's tyrannical 42-year regime, nor did the international community which laid the blame for a long list of atrocities at his door, most notably the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that kill 270 people, mainly Americans.

A final push to avert UN showdown,Set to meet Israeli, Palestinian leaders

 

President Barack Obama in final push to avert UN showdown

President Barack Obama was to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders Wednesday as diplomats scrambled to persuade Mahmud Abbas to drop a bid for UN membership of a Palestinian state.
Both the United States and the Europeans appeared to be working to buy more time to avert the looming clash, with Abbas determined to press ahead with plans to submit a formal application to UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in New York just hours ahead of his talks with Obama, with Israeli officials renewing an offer of talks here with Abbas.
"We believe the Palestinian bid at the UN is a mistake and it will not advance peace nor advance the establishment of a real Palestinian state," Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev, told AFP as the Israeli delegation arrived.
"Unfortunately, the Palestinian drive at the UN could hurt the chances of reaching a negotiated solution between Israeli and the Palestinians.
"We hope the Palestinians change track and prime minister Netanyahu's offer to start this week in New York direct peace talk stands. He is ready to meet with Palestinian President Abbas."
Obama will meet later Wednesday around 6:00pm with Abbas, as the US leads the diplomatic drive to steer the Palestinians off their course.
"The president will be able to say, very directly, why he believes that an action at the United Nations is not a way to achieve a Palestinian state," national security advisor Ben Rhodes said Tuesday.
Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were also both set to address the opening session of the UN General Assembly, with French sources saying Sarkozy could unveil a breakthrough in the standoff.
Obama has already called for negotiations to resume using the 1967 lines -- encompassing the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- as a starting point for the contours of an eventual Palestinian state.
European diplomats and the Middle East Quartet -- comprising the European Union, the United States, the United Nations and Russia -- were all seeking to head off the confrontation.
Sources close to the negotiations who asked to remain anonymous said the focus was on trying to buy time to allow a broader path towards resuming the direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which last collapsed in September 2010.
One possibility was that Ban would not hand over Abbas's letter straight away to the Security Council, a European source told AFP, adding there were other "diplomatic airbags" that could be used to defuse tensions.
Several diplomats said the aim was to find a plan that would satisfy both sides while also avoiding an escalation of violence in the volatile region.
The Palestinians need nine votes out of the 15 Security Council members for their bid for UN statehood to proceed.
If they fail to attract enough support, then the bid will fail without the need for a US veto, which the US administration has threatened to use.
The Middle East Quartet was seeking to draw up a statement that would coax Israel and the Palestinians back to talks, but British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who met Abbas Tuesday, said it had made "no progress."