Chocolatier finds sweet spot in Belize

Katrina Markoff, the founder of high-end Chicago chocolatier Vosges Haut-Chocolat, is nearing completion on two high-profile projects: a winery-style chocolate facility in Logan Square and an education center at a cacao plantation and eco-lodge in Belize.

Markoff isn't ready to talk about the Logan Square project, her spokeswoman said. But in an interview last week, she said she hopes the Belcampo farm in Belize will become the source of a majority of Vosges' cacao once its plants mature.

The project means Markoff will soon play a role in every aspect of production from seed selection through packaging without having to assume the financial risk of owning a tropical plantation.

Belcampo Group CEO Anya Fernald said the education center that Markoff helped design will open in mid-December, and Markoff will teach her first "master class" on cacao to guests at the 12-room lodge April 23-27. In exchange for her time and expertise, Markoff will receive a better price on the beans.

"I've always wanted to be involved through the full vertical, from actually growing the varietals of cacao I want, and being particular about how they're grown and harvested and fermented and dried," she said.

Once the farm reaches full yield in about five years, Fernald estimated it will produce 250,000 pounds of cacao annually. Already, with only 60 acres planted so far — all under a rain forest canopy — Fernald said Belcampo is already Belize's largest cacao plantation.

"The integrity of that project is really, really unique and special," Markoff said. "Typically when people buy beans to make chocolate, they just buy whatever is available in the commodity market. There's not a lot of control over how it's grafted, where it's planted, how it's nurtured, who's taking care of it. You just don't get that kind of control."

Bluhm continues gambling push

Chicago real estate and gambling executive Neil Bluhm is entering the race to build one of four planned casinos in Massachusetts and has launched an online gaming division in Chicago, said Greg Carlin, chief executive of Bluhm's Rush Street Gaming.

Earlier this year Rush Street hired Richard Schwartz from Waukegan-based WMS Industries and appointed him president of Rush Street Interactive, its new online gaming division.

"We think (Internet gaming) is going to be eventually legalized throughout the country, or in jurisdictions that have bricks-and-mortar casinos," Carlin said. "Illinois is actually a leader in selling lottery tickets online and could be a leader in Internet gaming as well if they get ahead of the curve and pass legislation before some of the other states."

Nevada and Delaware have legalized some forms of Internet gambling.

In recent years, Bluhm has built three casinos: Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, one in Pittsburgh and another in Philadelphia. In October, Bluhm sold his first U.S. casino, Riverwalk Casino and Hotel, in Vicksburg, Miss., for $141 million in cash to Churchill Downs Inc. (Bluhm held a 70 percent stake in Riverwalk.)

Churchill Downs, a horse racing and wagering company, also owns Arlington Park in Arlington Heights. Its largest shareholder is Duchossois Group, founded by Arlington Park Chairman Richard "Dick" Duchossois.

Duchossois has been trying to persuade the Illinois Legislature to approve slots at racetracks, which, if successful, would make Arlington Park a competitor of Bluhm's Des Plaines casino.

As for the Massachusetts casino, the gambling commission there will weigh applications for casino licenses well into 2013.

Alvarez joins Culloton

Public relations firm Culloton Strategies has hired Michael Alvarez, a commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, as senior vice president for public affairs.

As the Sun-Times reported in January, Alvarez, 32, has worked for Barack Obama, Rod Blagojevich and Richard M. Daley — while he has close ties to Ald. Richard Mell, Blagojevich's father-in-law.

In addition to his $70,000 annual salary at the water district, Alvarez has a $60,000-a-year public relations contract with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority and a "fast-growing" lobbying practice, the Sun-Times reported.

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Local Hostess plants close as company moves to liquidate

Hostess, the company that makes Twinkies and other sugary snacks, has announced it's going out of business following a worker strike.

Hostess Brands on Friday received a court order for an expedited hearing on its request to
liquidate.

The hearing on liquidation request is scheduled for 2 p.m. Eastern time Nov. 19, in bankruptcy court in White Plains, N.Y.

The bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, said it had sought court permission to go out of business after failing to get wage and benefit cuts from thousands of its striking bakery workers.

Hostess, which has about $2.5 billion in sales from a long list of iconic consumer brands of snack cakes and breads said it had suspended operations at all of its 33 plants around the United States as it moves to start liquidating assets.

"We'll be selling the brands and as much of the infrastructure as we can," said company spokesman Lance Ignon. "There is value in the brands."

Hostess said a strike by members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union that began last week had crippled its ability to produce and deliver products at several facilities, and it had no choice but to give up its effort to emerge intact from bankruptcy court.

The Irving, Texas-based company said the liquidation would mean that most of its 18,500 employees would lose their jobs.

In the Chicago area, Hostess employs about 300 workers making CupCakes, HoHos and Honey Buns in Schiller Park. Hostess also has a bakery in Hodgkins, where 325 workers make Beefsteak, Butternut, Home Pride, Nature’s Pride and Wonder breads.

Hostess spokesman Tom Becker confirmed that Hostess plants have closed, and the local factories in Hodgkins and Schiller Park ran their last production Friday morning. The company also has a plant in Peoria.

Calls to the Hodgkins and Schiller Park plants were not answered.

"I don't think it's a stretch to say there's a lot of sadness today," Becker said, adding that "18,500 people had jobs yesterday and knew they weren't going to have jobs anymore when they woke up today," referring to Hostess' total employee base.

"It's an extremely difficult decision for the company to have to make to shut down but unfortunately without the full involvement of its employees at the bakery, the company was unable to continue."

A statement on the Hostess Brands website begins with "Hostess Brands is closed."

According to Becker, most of the company's employees had approved an 8 percent pay cut for the coming year, but the members of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union had voted against the reduction and a change in the pension plan. 

Becker stressed that lingering pension obligations and other expenses felled the company, and not demand for its products.

"Demand was never the issue," Becker said, adding that company revenue for the year-ended May 11 was $2.5 billion. "We have very loyal customers who love our products and continued to buy our products."

Hostess had given employee a deadline to return to work on Thursday, but the union held firm, saying it had already given far more in concessions than workers could bear and that it would not bend further. Union officials blamed mismanagement for the company's woes.

The company, which filed for bankruptcy in January for the second time since 2004, said it had filed a motion with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York, for permission to shut down and sell assets.

Hostess has 565 distribution centers and 570 bakery outlet stores, as well as the 33 bakeries. Its brands include Wonder, Nature's Pride, Dolly Madison, Drake's, Butternut, Home Pride and Merita, but it is probably best known for Twinkies - basically a cream-filled sponge cake.

"We do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike," Chief Executive Officer Gregory Rayburn said in a statement. "Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders."

The company said in court filings that it would probably take about a year to wind down. It will need about 3,200 employees to start that process, but only about 200 after the first few months.

Gary Stibel, founder of the New England Consulting Group, said "the jury's still out," on the future of Hostess Brands, adding that the firm may be able to "work something out in the eleventh hour."

"There's a lot of activity going on," said Stibel, who added that his group is involved in the conversations, but not representing Hostess. "Let's just say there are a lot of folks who are going to be working over the weekend."

"This is no different than the fiscal cliff," Stibel said. "You've got different parties with very strong points of view, not coming together."

Stibel said the only thing for certain is that "these brands aren't going anywhere."

Union President Frank Hurt said the company's failure was not the fault of the union but the "result of nearly a decade of financial and operational mismanagement" and that management was trying to make union workers the scapegoats for a plan by Wall Street investors to sell Hostess.

Hostess said its debtor-in-possession lenders had agreed to allow it to retain access to $75 million to fund the wind-down process.

The company has canceled all orders with its suppliers and said any product in transit would be returned to the shipper.

In its filing with the court, the company said it would have incurred a loss of between $7.5 million and $9.5 million from Nov. 9 to Nov. 19 in lost sales and increased costs.

"These losses and other factors, including increased vendor payment terms contraction, have resulted in a significant weakening of the debtors' cash position and, if continued, would soon result in the debtors completely running out of cash," it said.

Hostess had already reached an agreement on pay and benefit cuts with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, its largest union.

In its January bankruptcy filing, Hostess listed assets of $981.6 million. In a February filing, it assessed the value of its patents, copyrights and other intellectual property at some $134.6 million, although it did not break down the value by brands.

The company's last operating report, filed with the bankruptcy court in late October, listed a net loss of $15.1 million for the four weeks that ended in late September, mostly due to restructuring charges and other expenses.

The case is In re: Hostess Brands Inc., U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-22052.

Tribune reporter Emily Bryson York contributed to this story.

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Exclusive: Facebook offering e-retailers sales tracking tool

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc wants more credit for making online cash registers ring.

Facebook will begin rolling out on Friday a new tool which will allow online retailers to track purchases by members of the social network who have viewed their ads.

The tool is the latest of the new advertising features Facebook is offering to convince marketers that steering advertising dollars to the company will deliver a payoff.

Facebook, with roughly 1 billion users, has faced a tough reception on Wall Street amid concerns about its slowing revenue growth.

"Measuring ad effectiveness and outcomes is absolutely crucial to all types of businesses and marketers," said David Baser, a product manager for Facebook's ads business who said the "conversion measurement" tool has been a top customer request for a long time.

The sales information that advertisers receive is anonymous, said Baser. "You would see the number of people who bought shoes," he said, using the example of an online shoe retailer. But marketers would not be able to get information that could identify the people, he added.

The conversion tool is specifically designed for so-called direct response marketers, such as online retailers and travel websites that advertise with the goal of drumming up immediate sales rather than for longer-term brand-building.

Such advertisers have long flocked to Google Inc's Web search engine, which can deliver ads to consumers at the exact moment they're looking for information on a particular product.

But some analysts say there is room for Facebook to make inroads if it can demonstrate results.

"The path to purchase" is not as direct on Facebook as it is on Google's search engine, said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with research firm eMarketer. But she said that providing information about customer sales conversion should help Facebook make a stronger case to online retailers.

"It lets marketers track the impact of a Facebook ad hours or days or even a week beyond when someone might have viewed the ad," said Williamson. "That allows marketers to understand the impact of the Facebook ad on the ultimate purchase."

Marketers will also have the option to aim their ads at segments of Facebook's audience with similar attributes to consumers that have responded well to a particular ad in the past, Baser said.

Online retailer Fab.com, which has tested Facebook's new service, was able to reduce its cost per new customer acquisition by 39 percent when it served ads to consumers deemed most likely to convert, Facebook said. Facebook defines a conversion as anything from a completed sale, to a consumer taking another desired action on a website, such as registering for a newsletter.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

Shares of Facebook, which were priced at $38 a share in its May initial public offering, closed Thursday's regular session at $22.17.

In recent months, Facebook has introduced a variety of new advertising capabilities and moved to broaden its appeal to various groups of advertisers.

Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in October that Facebook saw multi-billion revenue opportunities in each of four groups of advertisers: brand marketers, local businesses, app developers and direct response marketers.

Facebook does not disclose how much of its ad revenue, which totaled $1.09 billion in the third quarter, comes from each type of advertiser. Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser estimates that brand marketers and local businesses account for the bulk of Facebook's current advertising revenue.

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced a similar conversion measurement service for big brand advertisers, such as auto manufacturers, partnering with data mining firm Datalogix to help connect the dots between consumer spending at brick-and-mortar and Facebook ads.

And Facebook has rolled out new marketing tools for local businesses such as restaurants and coffee shops, including a revamped online coupon service and simplified advertising capabilities known as promoted posts.

The new conversion measurement tool is launching in testing mode, but will be fully available by the end of the month, Facebook said.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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Booker scores 19 as Colorado upsets No. 16 Baylor

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Colorado coach Tad Boyle always has a backup plan. The Buffaloes sure needed it Friday to take down No. 16 Baylor at the Charleston Classic.

Boyle knew his young players struggled from the foul line and watched them do it again, going 4 for 18 against Baylor.

"That's when you rely on defense and rebounding," he said, smiling.

The Buffaloes (3-0) got plenty of both to defeat the Bears 60-58 and advance to the championship of the eight-team tournament Sunday night. Not that it was easy to stomach down the stretch. Andre Roberson and Spencer Dinwiddie each missed in one-and-one situations, the usually reliable Booker was just 1 of 2 from the line and Roberson missed two more — all within the game's last 61 seconds.

All of it gave the Bears a chance to steal this one away.

Baylor's final chance ended when 7-foot-1 Isaiah Austin was off the mark on a catch-and-shoot prayer with a second left.

"They weren't making free throws but we weren't rebounding from the free-throw line," Baylor coach Scott Drew said. "I think it was two teams that wanted to win bad that didn't have postseason execution, but had early-season execution."

Askia Booker scored 19 points to lead Colorado, which earned a measure of payback for last March, when the Bears (3-1) knocked them out in the NCAA tournament's third round.

"We fought through the whole game because we know they're going to make shots," said Booker, who scored 15 points in the NCAA loss to Baylor. "It's going to come down to who wants it more."

Baylor star Pierre Jackson had just 12 points after scoring 31 in an opening-round win here against Boston College.

Cory Jefferson led the Bears with 17 points on 7-of-8 shooting. Austin finished with eight points and 12 rebounds.

Dinwiddie added 11 for Colorado, while Roberson had seven points and 13 rebounds, his second straight tournament game with double-digit boards.

Roberson and the Buffaloes had to be strong on the glass with so many missed free throws. Roberson missed a one-and-one try with 1:01 to go and Colorado ahead 59-56.

Jackson's bucket with 19.8 seconds left drew Baylor within a point.

Dinwiddie next went to the line for Colorado and he, too, missed a one-and-one. But Shane Harris-Tunks came up the rebound for the Buffaloes, and Booker was fouled.

He made only one attempt and Baylor was on the run. A.J. Walton was short on his driving shot, though, and Roberson collected the rebound and got fouled to set up the final moments.

Baylor had hoped to duplicate what it accomplished against Colorado in March in an 80-63 victory. But those Bears were loaded with tall, strong, talented players like Quincy Acy, Quincy Miller and Perry Jones III to get going down low. Brady Heslip helped outside with nine 3-pointers in that one.

This time, Heslip was off the mark, making just one of his six 3-point tries.

Booker said the Buffaloes took extra care to slow down Heslip, who they watched connect for 27 points in the NCAA win. The emphasis, Booker said, was to work through screens and not let Heslip get going with his outside shot.

Booker said Colorado accomplished a big goal of its trip South in defeating Baylor. The next step, he said, is leaving with the Charleston Classic championship.

"This last one's going to be very important," he said. "We didn't want to just beat Baylor, we want to win the whole thing."

Baylor falls to the third-place game Sunday afternoon. Drew knew his club would have early growing pains, melding five freshmen into what had been an experienced, savvy team last fall.

Drew said he took on this tournament to put his younger players into difficult situations so they'll feel more comfortable when the games get bigger later in the season.

"But right now, unfortunately, we might pick up some losses like today," Drew said.

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“30 Rock” character Liz Lemon to get her happy ending

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “30 Rock” perpetual unlucky-in-love heroine Liz Lemon is finally getting her happy ending, as NBC invited fans on Thursday to watch her get married this month.

After a string of bad boyfriends and unsuccessful romances, Lemon, played by comedienne Tina Fey, finds her soul mate in budding entrepreneur Criss Chross, who owns an organic gourmet hotdog food truck, played by actor James Marsden on the show.

“Ms. Elizabeth Miervaldis Lemon presents herself to be married to Mr. Crisstopher Rick Chross…But not in a creepy way that perpetuates the idea that brides are virgins and women are property,” NBC said in a mock wedding announcement, true to Lemon‘s feminist principles.

The wedding episode will be aired on November 29, during the Emmy-winning show’s seventh and final season.

While Lemon, 42, has never made it down the aisle before, she has had a couple of doomed engagements in past seasons, including her British boyfriend Wesley Snipes (Michael Sheen), whom she almost settled for before finding love with pilot Carol Burnett (Matt Damon).

The hapless singleton has also endured eventful dates with celebrities such as actor James Franco (along with his Japanese body pillow) and Conan O’Brien.

“30 Rock,” created by Fey and inspired by her stint as head writer for “Saturday Night Live”, follows the day-to-day life of fictional NBC sketch comedy show “TGS with Tracy Jordan,” and also stars Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan and Jane Krakowski.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Judge grants Miley Cyrus civil restraining order

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge has granted Miley Cyrus a three-year civil restraining order against a man convicted of trespassing at her home in Los Angeles.

The stay-away order was granted Friday against Jason Luis Rivera by Superior Court Judge William D. Stewart.

The 40-year-old Rivera was convicted in October of trespassing at the singer's home and sentenced to 18 months in jail.

He is scheduled to be released in May. Authorities said at the time of Rivera's arrest in September that he was carrying scissors and ran into the wall of Cyrus' home as if trying to break in.

Rivera did not respond to Cyrus' petition.

The 20-year-old former star of "Hannah Montana" did not attend the hearing. Her attorney Bryan Sullivan declined comment.

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Sources: Liguori planned as next Tribune CEO

The new owners set to take control of Tribune Co. when it emerges from bankruptcy protection plan to name television executive Peter Liguori as the company's chief executive, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Liguori is a former top TV executive at Fox and Discovery. The decision to name him CEO ends months of speculation and will usher in a new era for the 165-year-old media giant, which owns newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, and television stations.  

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to sign off Friday on waivers needed to transfer Chicago-based Tribune Co.'s broadcast properties to the new ownership, the final significant  hurdle before the company can exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy after four years.

 While a date is not set, the new ownership group controlled by senior creditors Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JP Morgan Chase, will likely take the reins by the end of the year. The first step for the owners will be to appoint a board of directors. The new board, once constituted, will have the final say on who becomes CEO, but sources say the owners have chosen Liguori.

 "The decision has been made," one of the sources said.

Los Angeles Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein has been CEO of Tribune Co. since May 2011. A Tribune Co. spokesman declined comment.

A former advertising executive who transitioned into television more than two decades ago, Liguori, 52, is credited with turning cable channel FX into a programming powerhouse during his ascent to entertainment chief at News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting. More recently, he served as chief operating officer at Discovery Communications Inc., where he helped oversee the rocky launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Liguori is considered by some observers as a good fit for Tribune and its new owners. While the company's identity is closely connected to publishing, broadcasting is now the headline business and core profit center.  One of Liguori's main jobs will be to help maximize ratings, advertising dollars and increasingly important affiliate fees for WGN America and Tribune Co.'s 23 local TV stations, according to industry insiders.

 Liguori "is a very, very smart hire for Oaktree and the guys that run the company because I think what Tribune needs more than anything is somebody to kind of build the brands back and make it a true media company, as opposed to just a collection of businesses," said Jeff Shell, London-based president of NBCUniversal International, who worked with Liguori for six years at Fox beginning in 1996. Shell spoke recently about his former colleague's potential value as CEO of Tribune Co.

Liguori could not immediately be reached for comment.

Liguori became president of Fox's FX Networks in 1998, when it was a small basic cable channel airing reruns of everything from M*A*S*H to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Elevated to CEO in 2001, he remade FX by offering edgy original programming. Starting with "The Shield" in 2002, Liguori rolled out "Nip/Tuck" and "Rescue Me," creating first-run successes that redefined FX, and perhaps basic cable, in the process.

 "FX was a channel, when he took over, a little tiny cable channel losing a bunch of money," Shell said. "He made it into something big by imagining something different, and I think that's what Tribune needs."  

Liguori became president of entertainment for Fox Broadcasting Company in 2005, where he headed up program development and marketing. Squeezed out in 2009, he then joined Discovery as chief operating officer, where one of his responsibilities was to oversee the nascent joint venture with OWN.

In May 2011, Liguori assumed the dual role as interim CEO of OWN after inaugural head Christina Norman was forced out at the struggling network. That added responsibility evaporated two months later when Winfrey made herself CEO of OWN. Liguori left Discovery in December and the company eliminated his COO position. 

Liguori has been working since July as a New York-based media consultant for private equity firm, the Carlyle Group.  He currently serves on the boards of Yahoo, MGM Holdings and Topps.

rchannick@tribune.com | Twitter @RobertChannick

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BP workers charged in Gulf oil spill disaster in 2010

A day of reckoning arrived for BP on Thursday as the oil giant agreed to plead guilty to a raft of criminal charges and pay a record $4.5 billion in a settlement with the government over the deadly 2010 disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Three BP employees were also charged, two of them with manslaughter.

The settlement and the indictments came 2 1/2  years after the drilling-rig explosion that killed 11 workers and set off the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The settlement includes nearly $1.3 billion in fines — the biggest criminal penalty in U.S. history — along with payments to entities inside and outside government. As part of the deal, the BP will plead guilty to charges related to the deaths of the 11 workers and to lying to Congress.

“We believe this resolution is in the best interest of BP and its shareholders,” said Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP chairman. “It removes two significant legal risks and allows us to vigorously defend the company against the remaining civil claims.”

Also, BP well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine were indicted on manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter charges, accused of disregarding abnormal high-pressure readings that should have glaring indications of trouble just before the deadly blowout.

In addition, David Rainey, who was BP's vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico at the time, was indicted on charges of obstruction of Congress and making false statements. Prosecutors said he withheld information from Congress that indicated the amount of oil spewing from BP's blown-out well was greater than he let on.

Rainey's lawyer said his client did “absolutely nothing wrong.” And attorneys for the two rig workers accused the Justice Department of making scapegoats out of them.

“Bob was not an executive or high-level BP official. He was a dedicated rig worker who mourns his fallen co-workers every day,” Kaluza attorneys Shaun Clarke and David Gerger said in a statement. “No one should take any satisfaction in this indictment of an innocent man. This is not justice.”

The settlement, which is subject to approval by a federal judge, includes payments of nearly $2.4 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences and about $500 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC accused BP of misleading investors by lowballing the amount of crude spewing from the well.

“This marks the largest single criminal fine and the largest total criminal resolution in the history of the United States,” Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference in New Orleans. He said much of the money will be used to restore the Gulf.

Holder said the criminal investigation is still going on.

The settlement does not cover the billions in civil penalties the U.S. government is seeking from BP under the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws. Nor does it cover billions of dollars in claims brought by states, businesses and individuals, including fishermen, restaurants and property owners.

A federal judge in New Orleans is weighing a separate, proposed $7.8 billion settlement between BP and more than 100,000 businesses and individuals who say they were harmed by the spill.

BP will plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect of a vessel's officers, one felony count of obstruction of Congress and one misdemeanor count each under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Clean Water Act. The workers' deaths were prosecuted under a provision of the Seaman's Manslaughter Act. The obstruction charge is for lying to Congress about how much oil was spilling.

The penalty will be paid over five years. BP made a profit of $5.5 billion in the most recent quarter. The largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the U.S. Justice Department was a $1.2 billion fine imposed on drug maker Pfizer in 2009.

Before Thursday, the only person charged in the disaster was a former BP engineer who was arrested in April on obstruction of justice charges. He was accused of deleting text messages about the company's response to the spill.

Greenpeace blasted the settlement as a slap on the wrist.

“This fine amounts to a rounding error for a corporation the size of BP,” the environmental group said.

Nick McGregor, an oil analyst at Redmayne-Bentley Stockbrokers, said the settlement would be seen as “an expensive positive.”

“This scale of bill is unpleasant,” he said. “But “the worst-case scenario for BP would be an Exxon Valdez-style decade of litigation. I think that is the outcome they are trying to avoid.”

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RIM to spice BlackBerry 10 AppWorld with local flavors

WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) - Research In Motion is pushing for app quality, not quantity, with its make-or-break BlackBerry 10 devices set for launch on January 30, and targeting applications to customers in various regions.

RIM's projected 100,000 apps - a record for any new platform at launch - will still be a fraction of those available on Apple Inc or Google Inc devices.

But it is a stronger showing than RIM's PlayBook tablet computer which was slammed at its 2011 launch for a dearth of apps and incomplete software.

In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, RIM Chief Executive Thorsten Heins admitted that app libraries play a crucial role in the success or failure of smartphones. But he said the game is not just about numbers.

"The tactic we are deploying is by country and by region. We are aiming to have the most important 200 to 400 apps available, because many applications are regional and they really do have a regional flavor," Heins said.

RIM says it aims to offer both the most popular applications in the market, and also those most relevant to Blackberry aficionados - people Heins described as hyper-connected multi-taskers who need to get things done.

RIM's ultra-secure BlackBerry was once the smartphone of choice for government and corporate elites. But rivals have taken giant bites out of RIM's market share, especially in North America, and the company's stock has slumped. The BlackBerry remains popular in many emerging markets, partly for its popular BBM messaging system.

With this in mind, RIM has hosted events with developers across the globe.

"We've done 30 jam conferences in various cities all around the world, to get the bucket filled with meaningful local apps and not just a huge bunch of applications that you collect and throw at your audience," he said. "It is a very, very targeted approach."

Heins, who has met with customers and carriers in a series of whirlwind global tours, came across as relaxed and confident in the interview, in RIM's Waterloo headquarters.

Speaking rapid fire English with just a hint of an accent from his native Germany, he acknowledged that RIM's fate may depend on the success of BB10, but he said feedback from clients has been very encouraging.

RIM hopes its new line of BB10 smartphones will help it claw back market share from Apple's iPhone and devices powered by Google's Android operating system. Developers say like what they see, but analysts are not convinced that RIM's gamble on BB10 will succeed.

BIG NAME DRAWS

In terms of numbers, RIM's app offering will remain far behind the Apple and Google app stores, each of which boast over 700,000 apps. But Heins said he was not worried.

"In my view it is really short-sighted to say, you have 600,000, you have 400,000 and you only have 100,000 apps, so you are not good," he said.

"Look at how many actually get downloaded. ... BlackBerry App World today is still the most profitable portal for application developers - it has the highest number of paid for downloads."

In a small dig at his rivals, he added: "We don't have 1,500 Solitaire apps. That is not what Blackberry is about."

RIM has already said it plans business focused apps from the likes of Cisco WebEx, Box, SAP and Blackboard, as well as music and movie apps like TuneIn, Nobex and Popcornflix and gaming apps from developers like Gameloft, Halfbrick and Paw Print Games.

Heins has said social networks such as LinkedIn, Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook will all have apps for BB10 at launch. But he declined to name any of the other big name apps that RIM will have on board come launch day.

"Allow me to talk to you about this on January 30, otherwise I'm losing a lot of thunder," he said.

(Editing by Janet Guttsman and Richard Chang)

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