New Google Share Classes Hit Market as Founders Cement Grip (1)

More than 330 million new shares of Google Inc. (GOOG:US) land in the U.S. equity market today, completing a two-year process through which Sergey Brin and Larry Page are cementing control of the world’s third-biggest company.

Stock in the largest search-engine owner is effectively splitting via a dividend distribution, with the price of existing Google A shares, which hold one vote each, falling by about half.

Outstanding common shares in the Mountain View, California-based company more than doubled with the addition of non-voting C shares, which traded at $579.51 at 9:59 a.m. in New York. The shares sold at a discount of $1.74 compared with the A shares, which traded at $581.25.

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Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ:US), operator of the Nasdaq Stock Market where Google shares are listed, is adding the Class C shares to its indexes under the “GOOG” symbol. Class A shares will be renamed “GOOGL” and subsequently removed from indexes when the exchange operator rebalances them on June 23.

“In a perfect world, you’d rather all shareholders be treated the same, but they have the right to do this, and we have the right to hold or sell our shares in response,” Ryan Jacob, manager of the Jacob Internet Fund, which counts Google among its top holdings, said in an interview in New York. “I can’t say I’m thrilled about it, but it’s not going to make me sell the shares. Once this takes effect, Google will be just as good an investment as it was yesterday.”

Non-Voting

By introducing non-voting shares, Page and Brin will be able to issue stock to compensate workers or make acquisitions without diluting their voting stake.

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The founders control 56 percent of the vote through their B shares, which don’t trade publicly and carry 10 votes each, according to the company’s March 28 proxy filing. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt owns 8.2 percent of the B shares, while Brin and Page hold 84 percent combined.

Tim Drinan, spokesman for Google, declined to comment beyond earlier statements by the company on the matter.

S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC will allow both share classes to trade on the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX), resulting in 501 listings in the gauge. The index operator will introduce multiclass listings across all of its U.S. indexes beginning September 2015.

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Shares of dual-class equities usually trade at different prices in the U.S. Discovery Communications Inc. (DISCA:US)’s Class A voting shares closed yesterday at $84.20 while the non-voting C shares cost $78.72, a 6.5 percent discount.

No Spread

Investors expect Google’s two classes to trade with little spread to each other. The company agreed to an unusual arrangement as part of a settlement with disgruntled investors in October in which it will reimburse holders of the Class C shares should they fail to keep up with the existing A stock.

Page and Brin are barred from selling C shares unless they sell an equal number of Class B shares. They need approval from independent directors to get around the restriction.

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“Eventually they’ll trade in line,” said Michael Binger, a portfolio manager at Gradient Investments LLC in Arden Hills, Minnesota, who helps oversee $450 million. “A dollar on a $700 stock, that’s just kind of the bid-offer rounding error.”

Fed board member Stein to resign

Jeremy Stein, a member of the Federal Reserve's board of governors, resigned Thursday, saying he plans to return to his economics teaching position at Harvard.

President Obama appointed Stein, 53, to the board in May 2012 to fill an unexpired term that ends Jan. 31, 2018.

His resignation is effective May 28.

"During my time here, the economy has moved steadily back in the direction of full employment, and a number of important steps have been taken to make the financial system stronger and more resilient," Stein said in his resignation letter to Obama. "There is undoubtedly more work to be done on both dimensions."

As one of the Fed's seven governors, Stein is a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed's policymaking panel that decides whether to raise or lower interest rates, among other decisions.

The committee is at a critical juncture since it began to wind down a bond-buying program aimed at holding down long-term interest rates, and must determine when to start raising short-term rates. The Fed has said that's likely to occur in mid-2015.

"Jeremy has made important contributions and served as an intellectual leader during his time at the board," said Fed Chair Janet Yellen. "His understanding of monetary policy and markets as well as his expertise in banking and financial regulation has proven invaluable in his service to the Federal Reserve and the country."

The Fed's board already had two open seats after Elizabeth Duke resigned last summer and former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke stepped down when his second term ended in January. Yellen replaced him as chairman but her previous vice chair slot is still unfilled.

President Obama has nominated Stanley Fischer, former chief of Israel's central bank, to be vice chair and Lael Brainard, former Treasury under secretary, as a board member. Both are awaiting Senate confirmation.

Death toll in Washington mudslide rises to 30

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — As medical examiners painstakingly piece together the identities and lives of the 30 people known killed when a mudslide wiped out a small Washington community, one mystery troubles them.

One set of remains does not fit with the description on the missing persons list, which, as of Thursday included 17 people.

The medical examiners know it is a male. But his remains give no clue as to who he was, or who might be looking for him. They can't even identify his age range. Without possible family members to compare, DNA tests are useless. At this point, gold teeth are all they have to go on.

The mystery underscores the tedious process of identifying remains more than a week after the March 22 landslide that broke off a steep hill, roared across the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River and buried a community at Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle.

Like the homes, the cars and the other parts of people's lives swept away by the torrent of mud, some bodies are in pieces.

Norman Thiersch, the Snohomish County Medical Examiner, said the goal of the team — which is made up of medical examiners, detectives, dentists and others — is to make sure there's no doubt as to the identities of the victims.

"This is not television," he said. "These are methodical, painstaking processes we go through."

Although the identities of 28 of the 30 confirmed dead have been determined, officials have so far released the names of only 27. Other names are expected to be released by the end of the week.

HOW ARE THE BODIES PROCESSED?

When bodies or remains are found in the mudslide area, crews dig them out and they are flown by helicopter to a nearby landing pad where they are readied to move to the medical examiner's office in Everett, about 30 miles from the scene. Once there, the bodies are moved to a tented area for decontamination, where they are cleaned in warm water. From there they are moved to the autopsy room where examiners take fingerprints, look for signs of dental work and identifying marks such as tattoos. When that work is complete, remains are moved to a refrigerated area where they stay until funeral homes make arrangements for burial or cremation.

WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG TO IDENTIFY BODIES?

The process for identifying remains, some of which are partial, is careful work, especially when trauma is involved, Thiersch said.

"This isn't going into a room and saying, 'This is him,'" he said.

Efforts to identify using dental work, fingerprints or tattoos, can take time and if that doesn't work, officials turn to DNA testing. But that works best in cases in which a close family member can give a sample for comparison. They've only needed to use DNA testing to identify one of the slide victims. At the same time, detectives are working to help determine identities by using information from families, social media accounts and belongings from the site.

HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE WORKING THERE? WHAT DO THEY DO?

The regular staff of about 12 at the Snohomish County Medical Examiner's office has been supported with dozens of professionals from King, Pierce, Skagit and Kitsap counties and members of the Air National Guard. Medical examiners are working with pathologists, dentists and medical investigators to clean bodies, take fingerprints, and note tattoos or other distinguishing features. Detectives and other professionals do online research and call families to determine the identities of the victims.

HOW DO WORKERS COPE IN THESE SITUATIONS?

People working at the medical examiner's office are doing everything from calling family members to cleaning bodies and the stress takes a toll. On Wednesday, a therapy dog named Paddington comforted members of the Air National Guard and medical investigators.

A team of county mental health workers was expected to visit the office later this week to meet with workers one-on-one.

Medical examiner's office deputy director Dennis Peterson said staff has been so dedicated to the work that he's had to "kick them out" to force them to rest.

HOW LONG BEFORE ALL REMAINS ARE IDENTIFIED?

Officials said Wednesday they expect all remains currently at the medical examiner's office to be identified by later this week, except for the one man. Investigators are still working to determine his identity.

"We make no assumptions," Snohomish County Sheriff's office Sgt. Shawn Stich said, noting they will not give up the investigation.

"It's such a big impact on our community and that's why we are here."

British Queen meets Pope Francis for first time

VATICAN CITY: Queen Elizabeth II met Pope Francis for the first time on Thursday on a visit that coincides with the anniversary of the Falklands War and is also the 87-year-old monarch's first foreign trip since 2011.

Dressed in lilac and clutching a bouquet of flowers, the queen smiled as she arrived at Ciampino airport, shaking hands with dignitaries on the red carpet.

She and her husband Prince Philip then had lunch with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano at the Quirinale Palace, where they were greeted with a military salute and crowds of supporters, some waving Union Jack flags.

Wearing one of her trademark hats decorated with flowers, and with a black purse over her arm to match her shoes, the monarch looked pleased to see the 88-year-old president.

The British royals were then seen arriving at the Vatican for the private audience with Francis in a room next to the Paul VI auditorium in the Vatican, with hundreds of people cheering as their car drove in.

The queen's talks with the Argentine pope come a day after the 32nd anniversary of the start of the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina and come amid thorny Anglican-Catholic relations.

But British officials have played down the prospect of any contentious issues on the agenda as the queen, the "supreme governor" of the Church of England, holds talks with the head of the world's Catholics.

Britain's ambassador to the Holy See Nigel Baker told Vatican radio that there had been "extraordinary" progress in Britain-Vatican and Anglican-Catholic relations since the Queen's coronation in 1952.

"She will want I think to understand from Pope Francis how he sees the role of faith in the world," he said.

On the Falklands War, he said: "The Vatican has been clear with us, including in the last week and at a very senior level, that their long-standing position of neutrality on this issue remains in force".

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the meeting was "very informal".

Francis will be the fifth pope the queen has met, starting with Pius XII in 1951 when she was still a princess.

She has also met John XXIII, John Paul II and pope emeritus Benedict XVI, who stepped down last year.

The couple's last foreign trip was to Australia in 2011, and the one-day visit will last only a few hours, without much of the pomp usually associated with royal travel to avoid tiring the ageing royals.

While the talks are likely to be purely formal, Anglican-Catholic ties are an issue because of resentment in Britain over the Vatican's move to bring conservative Anglican priests who dissented from the Church of England over female ordination.

But relations between Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the spiritual leader of the Church of England, are cordial and the two met in 2013 and are expected to hold talks later this year.

The Anglican church, which separated from Rome in the 16th century, has around 80 million faithful compared with the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

Another potentially divisive issue is over the British-ruled Falkland Islands- referred to in Argentina as the Malvinas-to which Latin America's first pope has shown he is sensitive by once referring to them as "ours" before becoming pope.

He also said Britain had "usurped" the islands. Francis last month met a group of 12 Argentine war veterans holding a placard for "peace in the South Atlantic" during a general audience in St Peter's Square.

Argentine forces invaded the islands on April 2, 1982, but were forced to surrender in June after British forces recaptured them in fighting that left 649 Argentinians, 255 British and three islanders dead.

Following Pope Francis's election last year, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he "respectfully" disagreed with the pope, after a referendum, also in 2013, in which 99.8 percent of Falkland Islanders voted in favour of remaining British.

"The white smoke over the Falklands was pretty clear," he quipped - a reference to the smoke signal used by cardinals in the Sistine Chapel to show that a new pope has been elected.

Ukraine: Yanukovych ordered snipers to shoot

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s interim authorities accused the country’s ousted president of ordering snipers to open fire on protesters and getting help from Russian security agents to battle his own people — but their report Thursday provided no evidence directly linking him to the bloodbath in Kiev.

Acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov also accused his predecessor of employing gangs of killers, kidnappers and thugs to terrorize and undermine the opposition during Ukraine’s tumultuous winter of discontent.

The preliminary findings revealed by Kiev’s new leadership examined the months of anti-government protests that culminated in the deaths in February over 100 people in Kiev, mostly protesters. That violence forced a truce between the opposition and the government, but that arrangement quickly collapsed, and President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia.

In the weeks since the bloodshed, Russia seized and then formally annexed Crimea, Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea peninsula, and the U.S. and the European Union slapped sanctions on those responsible, mainly Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

Also Thursday, Ukraine sent 16 senior officers to Bulgaria to join a NATO military exercise in a very public demonstration of cooperation between the alliance and the crisis-torn former Soviet republic. The drills involved over 700 troops from 13 NATO member and partner nations and were being held just a few hundred miles away from Crimea.

Speaking at a televised press conference in Kiev, Avakov accused Yanukovych’s government of ordering snipers to shoot at protesters from rooftops near the city’s central square, known as the Maidan. He said 17 people were killed from one location and one government sniper alone killed as many as eight people.

Ukrainian Security Service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko charged that Yanukovych himself had ordered the killings.

“What was planned under the guise of an anti-terrorist operation, and which was in fact an operation of mass killing of people, took place under the immediate and direct leadership of former president Yanukovych,” Nalyvaichenko said.

He did not elaborate on how he knew this information, whether it was from witnesses, government documents, airline records or other sources.

Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky said 12 members of an elite riot police unit named “Black Squadron” have been detained on suspicion of shooting protesters,

Nalyvaichenko also said there was evidence that Russia’s FSB security service assisted its Ukrainian counterparts’ attempts to suppress the anti-government protests. He said groups of FSB members were deployed at a Ukrainian security facility — 26 in December and six in January — and that they took part in planning and implementing anti-protest measures. He said the Russians even interrogated the Ukrainian security chief.

Nalyvaichenko contended that in late January, when peaceful protests turned into bloody street clashes with police, Russia sent planes to Kiev carrying massive amounts of explosive devices, arms and crowd control devices “to organize executions and the extermination of our protesters on the Maidan.”

Russia’s FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, swiftly dismissed the claims, telling the state news agency RIA Novosti that the allegations should “rest on the conscience of the Ukrainian Security Service.”

The identity of the snipers believed to be responsible for most of the deaths is the subject of bitter disagreement.

The interim government says Yanukovych ordered snipers to be deployed and to fire at protesters — a charge that Yanukovych denied in an AP interview Wednesday in Russia.

Opponents of Ukraine’s current leadership, meanwhile, say some snipers were also organized by opposition leaders trying to whip up outrage.

The new health minister, Oleh Musiy, who previously served as the protesters’ top medic, has said he treated both protesters and riot police with similar types of sniper wounds.

The speakers at Thursday’s presentation skirted a question on whether any snipers were also shooting at police. Avakov said establishing who was responsible for the deaths of law enforcement officers would be part of the broad investigation that is still ongoing.

Avakov also detailed what he described as overwhelming evidence linking former Interior Minister Vitali Zakharchenko, who was in charge of police during the protests, to a person coordinating hired thugs that perpetrated a campaign of beatings and intimidation against opposition activists.

Avakov said another underworld figure operating under Yanukovych’s and Zakharchenko’s patronage ran a group of 10 people carrying out beatings and kidnappings of protest organizers, including the kidnapping of a prominent activist and his colleague. The latter was killed in the attack.

In his interview with the AP, Yanukovych said Wednesday that he “was wrong” in inviting Russian troops into Crimea, which was swiftly annexed by Moscow following a referendum in which the vast majority of residents backed a reunion with Russia.

Ukraine’s fledging government and Western leaders have since expressed concern about a recent buildup of Russian forces near the Ukrainian border.

U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who commands all NATO forces in Europe, said Russia has 40,000 troops along the border with neighboring Ukraine, and that they are capable of attacking by land and air on 12 hours’ notice.

The sheer size and posture of Russia’s forces are destabilizing, although the Russians’ plans remain unknown to NATO, Breedlove said.

Given their capabilities, the force would be able to push all the way to the Ukrainian port city of Odessa or the breakaway ethnic Russian enclave of Trans-Dniester in Moldova, he said. Alternatively, the Russians could open a “land bridge” through Ukrainian territory to the south, toward Crimea, or just stand pat and exert pressure on Ukraine’s May 25 presidential election, he said.

Putin says the troops are there for military exercises. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters Thursday that the Russian troops will be returning to “their permanent quarters as soon as other participants of the exercise have completed their tasks.”

Lavrov, however, accused the Ukrainian government “and their patrons in the West of blowing this out of proportion,” adding that Russia did not violate any international norms by sending additional troops to its own border.

Yanukovych, in the interview with AP and Russia’s state NTV television, did not answer several questions about whether he would support any Russian moves into other areas of Ukraine on the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians.

Campaign spending explodes: A look at where the money has gonehttp://www.trbimg.com/img-533c5b04/turbine/la-na-nn-total-cost-20140402/600

The U.S. Supreme Court moved this week to loosen limitations on big political donors, continuing a march that has contributed to an explosion of campaign spending.

Consider the shift over a mere 20 years: as 1992’s presidential campaign dawned, Bill Clinton was considered a master fundraiser because he had pulled in just over $3 million the previous year.

By 2012, President Obama and his Republican nemesis, Mitt Romney, each corralled more than $1 billion in donations. And that’s just counting money their campaigns raised, not hundreds of millions of dollars more in outside, legally independent spending.

Some of the growth comes from inflation, some from population increases over time. But much of the dramatic surge in fundraising and spending in recent years stems from court decisions that have relaxed restrictions in campaign spending enforced since the Watergate era.

The high court on Wednesday effectively moved the maximum amount a single donor can offer candidates running for Congress from $123,200 per election cycle to $3.6 million. It did that by voiding the limit on the amount of overall money that one donor can give. It left in place the current restrictions against giving more than $5,200 to any single candidate, though the language in the decision suggested that the per-candidate rule’s shelf life may be coming to an end as well.

The decision built on the court’s ruling four years ago in the Citizens United case, which freed corporations, unions and others to spend unlimited amounts on campaign efforts through so-called super PACs. Those groups and their fundraising brethren, tax-exempt social advocacy groups that do not have to report their donors, spent about as much in the last election season as each presidential candidate.

The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign donations and spending, compiled data from finance reports and what can be discerned from the newer sorts of groups—at least those which make public their donors.

In the hotly contested presidential year of 2000, it found, the total election bill for White House and congressional candidates was less than $3.1 billion. By 2012, the cost had more than doubled to nearly $6.3 billion. Among congressional races—the kind likely to be even better financed under the terms of the new court decision—the cost rose from less than $1.7 billion to almost $3.7 billion. Republicans outraised Democrats, with 52% of the 2012 spending, to 44% for Democrats.


Center for Responsive Politics

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision, opinions abounded about its impact.

Some analysts suggested that because only a few hundred donors nationally bumped against the smaller spending limit, only that small number were likely to further empty their wallets under the new, looser rules. Some suggested that it was more likely that money would shift from the surreptitious accounts encouraged by the Citizens United decision into more direct—and public—campaign accounts run by candidates and parties.

One thing has been abundantly clear in the last few decades: Whatever the rules, money will find its way into the system in ever larger sums.

Fort Hood shooting: What we know now

USA TODAY Network brings you the latest on the Fort Hood shooting which left four dead, including the shooter, and 16 wounded. Here's what we know so far:

How the scene unfolded: Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, head of the Army's III Corps at Fort Hood, said a shooter walked into a Texas building in the 1st Medical Brigade at about 4 p.m. Wednesday and opened fire with a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

He then got into a vehicle, fired more shots from the vehicle, went to another building and began shooting, Milley said. Lopez was engaged by responding military police. A female soldier encountered the shooter in a parking lot, Miley said.

Lopez reached to pull out his weapon from under his jacket. The female shooter then pulled out her gun and "engaged" from about 20 feet away. Lopez then put the gun to his head and fired.

Victims: Three victims remain in critical condition with neck, spine and abdominal injuries respectively, according to officials at Scott & White Memorial Hospital. There is a possibility several may be released from the hospital today. Eight males and one female are being treated at the hospital. All are current military. Doctors said they do not expect more fatalities at this time.

Three died on Wednesday during the shooting. Sixteen are wounded.

Gunman: The Army said the gunman, identified as Spc. Ivan Lopez, was an Iraq war veteran who was being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder, but had not yet been diagnosed for the illness.

Lopez is from Puerto Rico. He spent nine years in the Puerto Rico National Guard as an infantryman, including a 12-month deployment to the Sinai, before going on active duty, said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno.

He was being treated for depression and anxiety. Lopez served four months in Iraq in 2011 but did not see combat. He had "self diagnosed" a traumatic brain injury." The motivation of the shooting is not known at this time. Lopez, who was assigned to the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), is married and has family.

The weapon: The 45-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun was not registered on base with post authorities as required. Military authorities do not know how much ammunition Lopez was carrying at this time.