Conversation: A Founder of the Soap Maker Method Discusses Its Sale

For Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, the quest began in 2001 in what they call a “dirty little flat” in San Francisco, where the two childhood buddies from Detroit first plotted to disrupt the all-but-impenetrable cleaning products industry long dominated by giants like SC Johnson and Procter & Gamble.

They started by mixing soap formulas in beer pitchers labeled “Do Not Drink” and wound up creating Method, an irreverent, design-driven, environmentally minded company that outsourced manufacturing. The company grew to $34 million in revenue and 39 employees in 2005, and more than $100 million and 100 employees in 2012. Those numbers remain modest compared to those of Big Soap, but a walk down the cleaning aisle in almost any supermarket reveals not just Method’s reach (Ginger Yuzu dish soap, Pink Grapefruit hand wash) but its impact on competitors (Clorox Green Works).

“We showed up at the party with a very different proposition,” Mr. Ryan said. “We’re superproud that we’ve had an influence.”

That influence will continue, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Lowry suggest, even though Method was acquired for an undisclosed price in September by the Belgian company Ecover, creating what they claim is now the largest green cleaning company in the world, with revenue “north of $200 million.”

In a conversation that has been edited and condensed, we recently asked Mr. Ryan why he and Mr. Lowry chose to sell, how they identified the right suitor, and what will happen to the Method brand.

Q. Was selling the company always a primary goal?

A. When we started the company, we knew we had two choices. One was to grow organically, which a lot of businesses do, and you control the business and grow slowly and steadily. We fundamentally believed that we would not have success in this competitive space unless we went after it fast and aggressively. So we had to take outside capital. And when we took that outside capital — at some point, you have to give it back with a return.

Q. You make soap, you sell it, you make more soap, you sell more of it. Why couldn’t you grow without being acquired?

A. Two primary reasons. One is just economies of scale. In the early years, we lost money on every product we sold. We were competing against companies that not only have a 100-year head start but have just built incredible efficiencies. They own their own plants. When you walk in a grocery store and that bottle of dish soap sells for $1.99, we could not make it for $1.99 in the beginning. We needed capital to accelerate growth, to get our volume to a place where the business would be profitable. Two is that the cost of doing business in the mass channel is really expensive. When you sell in a grocery store, you have to pay an upfront fee called slotting charges. And that takes a fair amount of capital. So growing organically is possible, but it’s really, really tough.

Q. You’ve built a brand that seems to resonate with consumers. Are you concerned about their reaction to the sale?

A. It was something that was heavy in our minds for a lot of years. The typical script for a socially driven company like ours is you get acquired by a major strategic. So look at Honest Tea, acquired by Coke. Kashi by Kellogg. Burt’s Bees by Clorox. Even Mrs. Meyer’s, in our space, by SC Johnson. I always justified it by saying, “Well, if that happens, it’ll give us the chance to work from a bigger, global stage, and we’ll try to change those companies from the inside out.” And once we did this deal, I was just so thankful we never had to go down that path. We recognized we had a partner at the table with identical mission statements, identical values and a real long-term commitment. It was just an opportunity too good to pass up.

Q. Did you say no to other offers because you didn’t see that cultural fit?

A. We can’t name names, but we did have, over the years, conversations with those usual suspects. And the movie looked pretty similar — full integration, we go from being a company to being an operating unit within a larger organization. The culture, the team, “the Method Method” that we spent the last 10 years building would have been nonexistent within 12 months.

Q. Will the Method brand continue to exist?

A. Very much so. We’ll be building our own plant in North America. We’re turning on TV advertising for the first time in our history. We’re expanding more aggressively in Europe and Asia than we would have done otherwise. We’re creating a company with a long-term focus on the future. When you’re private equity-backed, it’s a much more short-term focus in how you invest and build the organization. The big thing that’s changing now, we’re a house of brands, which is Method and Ecover. And we have to set up a business where they coexist in a way that they don’t cannibalize each other and reach a broader audience collectively.

Q. Obviously, you’re in the honeymoon phase. How do you protect against something going wrong?

A. At the end of the day, it’s like a marriage — there is a leap of faith. And the way that you can protect yourself the most is just really trusting your instincts of who you’re jumping in bed with. It’s just like a job interview or any other relationship. If you’re getting to a point where you’re having to lean on a lot of legalities or other ways to try to protect yourself, it’s probably not the right relationship. It just comes back again to, are these people you trust, who share the same vision?

Q. While this was developing, how open were you with your employees?

A. You just can’t talk openly. It can do damage to the deal, but also, it’s a roller coaster, and you don’t want everyone riding the roller coaster with you. It’s incredibly distracting. There was a very small group that was in the know, and those were only the ones that were needed for due diligence. People knew we were looking and we were upfront about that, but they didn’t know to what extent, because we didn’t know to what extent. So when we did the announcement, there was initial shock, but over all it went well. And then for the next week, it was really challenging because what happened — what we were completely blindsided by — was how many people in their careers had been through a bad M.& A. transaction. There were a lot of bad movies that started being replayed. What I told everybody was, “Look, I’ve never been through a bad merger in my life, and I’m not about to start now.”

Q. Things have been tough in Europe. Any concerns about partnering with a European company and expanding there?

A. I like the idea of investing when something is at its lowest. [Laughs.] No, we have not had too many concerns about it. This business is firing on all cylinders. I was definitely, in the back of my head, concerned that things would get derailed by the European crisis, but who we’re dealing with is very long-term focused and they’re also very globally minded. Europe is a big part of their business, but they’re also expanding aggressively in Asia — we are as well — and North America.

Q. And everyone needs soap.

A. And everybody needs soap. It’s a dirty world out there.

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Deadly Explosions Hit Aleppo University

A series of deadly explosions struck the Aleppo University campus in Syria on Tuesday, antigovernment activists and Syrian state television reported, in what appeared to be a major expansion of the violent struggle for control of the largest city in the nearly two-year-old Syrian conflict. Each side blamed the other for the blasts.

Antigovernment activists also reported that violence convulsed some suburbs of Damascus, the capital, where members of the insurgent Free Syrian Army were engaged in combat with government forces in the Ain Tarma and Zamalka neighborhoods. The fighting erupted after a campaign of Syrian Air Force attacks over the past few days apparently aimed at expunging insurgents from strategic areas. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an antigovernment group based in Britain with a network of contacts in Syria, said at least 15 people were killed and dozens wounded in the explosions at Aleppo University, which was in a government-controlled part of Aleppo and had been conducting classes despite the mayhem and deprivation that have ravaged other parts of the city.

Aleppo, in northern Syria, has essentially been under siege since July, with insurgents and government forces in a stalemate. The city, which was once the commercial epicenter of Syria, has been struck by numerous shellings, bombings and airstrikes, but the university area had been largely spared until Tuesday.

Antigovernment activists said the university dormitories, which had been housing both students and civilians displaced by fighting elsewhere, were hit by one missile fired by Syrian military forces. They said buildings housing the architecture and humanities departments were also hit by missiles fired by the military.

Syria’s state-run SANA news service did not specify the number of casualties but said the explosions came on the first day of exams. SANA attributed the death and destruction to at least two rockets fired by what it called terrorists, the government’s blanket description for the armed insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.

Photographs and video uploaded on the Internet by antigovernment groups showed extensive destruction of dormitory buildings, the hulks of several burned vehicles and bodies on the ground.

The United Nations has estimated that more than 60,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising against Mr. Assad began in March 2011.

Mr. Assad appeared to further distance himself on Monday from any thought of relinquishing power via a BBC interview with his deputy foreign minister, Faisal Muqdad. Mr. Muqdad suggested that Mr. Assad would run for re-election next year when his term expires. “We are opening the way for democracy, or deeper democracy,” he said. “In a democracy you don’t tell somebody not to run.”

Groups opposed to Mr. Assad have said they will not even consider political dialogue to resolve the conflict unless Mr. Assad resigns or is removed from power first. The special peace envoy from the United Nations and the Arab League, Lakhdar Brahimi, has urged Mr. Assad to step down and said he cannot be part of any transitional government. The Syrian government has accused Mr. Brahimi of bias toward the insurgency.

With diplomacy still deadlocked, more than 50 member states in the United Nations submitted an unusual written appeal to the Security Council on Monday to at least request an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes and atrocities committed in Syria, by both the loyalist and the insurgent sides.

But whatever chance of such a move appeared to be ended on Tuesday by Russia, the biggest foreign defender of the Syrian government, which has vetoed three Security Council proposals on Syrian intervention since the conflict began.

“We consider this initiative ill-timed and counterproductive if we are to achieve the current priority goal — an immediate end to bloodshed in Syria,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “We are convinced that speculation about international criminal prosecution and the search for guilty parties will only serve to keep the opposing sides in hard-line positions and complicate the search for a path of political-diplomatic settlement of the Syrian conflict.”

Rick Gladstone reported from New York, and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon. Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.

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Oprah: Lance Armstrong admitted doping

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Lance Armstrong has finally come clean.

Armstrong confessed to doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey taped Monday, just a couple of hours after a wrenching apology to staff at the Livestrong charity he founded and has now been forced to surrender.

The day ended with 2 1/2 hours of questions from Winfrey at a downtown Austin hotel, where she said the world's most famous cyclist was "forthcoming" as she asked him in detail about doping allegations that followed him throughout his seven Tour de France victories.

Speaking on "CBS This Morning," Winfrey said Tuesday she had not planned to address Armstrong's confession before the interview aired on her OWN network but, "by the time I left Austin and landed in Chicago, you all had already confirmed it."

"So I'm sitting here now because it's already been confirmed," she added.

The session was to be broadcast on Thursday but Winfrey said it will now run in two parts over two nights because there is so much material.

Winfrey would not characterize whether Armstrong seemed contrite but said he seemed ready for the interview. "I would say that he met the moment," she said.

"I don't think 'emotional' begins to describe the intensity or the difficulty he experienced in talking about some of these things."

The confession was a stunning reversal for a proud athlete and celebrity who sought lavish praise in the court of public opinion and used courtrooms to punish his critics.

For more than a decade, Armstrong dared anybody who challenged his version of events to prove it. Finally, he told the tale himself after promising over the weekend to answer Winfrey's questions "directly, honestly and candidly."

The cyclist was stripped of his Tour titles, lost most of his endorsements and was forced to leave Livestrong last year after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a damning, 1,000-page report that accused him of masterminding a long-running doping scheme.

The International Cycling Union, or UCI, issued a statement on Tuesday saying it was aware of the reports that Armstrong had confessed to Winfrey. The governing body for the sport urged Armstrong to tell his story to an independent commission it has set up to examine claims it covered up suspicious samples from the cyclist, accepted financial donations from him and helped him avoid detection in doping tests.

Armstrong started Monday with a visit to the headquarters of Livestrong, the charity he founded in 1997 and turned into a global force on the strength of his athletic dominance and personal story of surviving testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain.

About 100 Livestrong staff members gathered in a conference room as Armstrong told them "I'm sorry." He choked up during a 20-minute talk, expressing regret for the long-running controversy tied to performance-enhancers had caused, but stopped short of admitting he used them.

Before he was done, several members were in tears when he urged them to continue the charity's mission, helping cancer patients and their families.

"Heartfelt and sincere," is how Livestrong spokeswoman Katherine McLane described his speech.

Armstrong later huddled with almost a dozen people before stepping into a room set up at a downtown Austin hotel for the interview with Winfrey. The group included close friends and lawyers. They exchanged handshakes and smiles, but declined comment.

Winfrey has promoted her interview, one of the biggest for OWN since she launched the network in 2011, as a "no-holds barred" session, and after the voluminous USADA report — which included testimony from 11 former teammates — she said she went into the session with 112 questions ready to go. Not all of them were asked, she said, but many were.

USADA chief executive Travis Tygart, a longtime critic of Armstrong's, called the drug regimen practiced while Armstrong led the U.S. Postal Service team "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen." USADA did not respond to requests for comment about Armstrong's confession.

For years, Armstrong went after his critics ruthlessly during his reign as cycling champion. He scolded some in public and didn't hesitate to punish outspoken riders during the race itself. He waged legal battles against still others in court.

At least one of his opponents, the London-based Sunday Times, has already filed a lawsuit to recover about $500,000 it paid him to settle a libel case, and Dallas-based SCA Promotions, which tried to deny Armstrong a promised bonus for a Tour de France win, has threatened to bring another lawsuit seeking to recover more than $7.5 million awarded by an arbitration panel.

In Australia, the government of South Australia state said Tuesday it will seek the repayment of several million dollars in appearance fees paid to Armstrong for competing in the Tour Down Under in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

"We'd be more than happy for Mr. Armstrong to make any repayment of monies to us," South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill said.

Betsy Andreu, the wife of former Armstrong teammate Frankie Andreu, was one of the first to publicly accuse Armstrong of using performance-enhancing drugs. She called news of Armstrong's confession "very emotional and very sad," and choked up when asked to comment.

"He used to be one of my husband's best friends and because he wouldn't go along with the doping, he got kicked to the side," she said. "Lance could have a positive impact if he tells the truth on everything. He's got to be completely honest."

Betsy Andreu testified in SCA's arbitration case challenging the bonus in 2005, saying Armstrong admitted in an Indiana hospital room in 1996 that he had taken many performance-enhancing drugs, a claim Armstrong vehemently denied.

"It would be nice if he would come out and say the hospital room happened," Andreu said. "That's where it all started."

Former teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for doping, has filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that accused Armstrong of defrauding the U.S. Postal Service. An attorney familiar with Armstrong's legal problems told the AP that the Justice Department is highly likely to join the lawsuit. The False Claims Act lawsuit could result in Armstrong paying a substantial amount of money to the U.S. government. The deadline for the department to join the case is Thursday, though the department could seek an extension if necessary.

According to the attorney, who works outside the government, the lawsuit alleges that Armstrong defrauded the U.S. government based on his years of denying use of performance-enhancing drugs. The attorney spoke on condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak on the record about the matter.

The lawsuit most likely to be influenced by a confession might be the Sunday Times case. Potential perjury charges stemming from Armstrong's sworn testimony in the 2005 arbitration fight would not apply because of the statute of limitations. Armstrong was not deposed during the federal investigation that was closed last year.

Armstrong is said to be worth around $100 million. But most sponsors dropped him after USADA's scathing report — at the cost of tens of millions of dollars — and soon after, he left the board of Livestrong.

After the USADA findings, he was also barred from competing in the elite triathlon or running events he participated in after his cycling career. World Anti-Doping Code rules state his lifetime ban cannot be reduced to less than eight years. WADA and U.S. Anti-Doping officials could agree to reduce the ban further depending on what information Armstrong provides and his level of cooperation.

___

Litke reported from Chicago. Pete Yost in Washington also contributed to this report.

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Well: For DTaP Vaccine, Thigh May Be Better Injection Site Than Arm

Children are less likely to develop bad reactions to the DTaP vaccine, a routine immunization shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, or whooping cough, if they get it in their thigh instead of in their arm, a new study shows.

The research looked at more than a million children who were given injections of the vaccine. In many cases it causes some degree of redness or swelling around the injection site, which typically goes away after a day. But in rare instances a child can develop a more pronounced reaction, like severe pain or a swollen limb, that may require medical attention.

In the new study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that children between the ages of 1 and 3 who were given the DTaP vaccine in their thigh instead of in their upper arm were around half as likely to have a local reaction that warranted a visit to a doctor, nurse or emergency room. Previous studies of children who received the vaccine between the ages of 4 and 6 found that they, too, had a lower likelihood of developing a local reaction requiring medical attention if they got the shot in their thigh instead of in their arm.

Why the vaccine would be less harsh on the thigh than the arm is not known for certain. But one possibility is simply that in children at that age, the thigh muscle is much larger than the deltoid, the muscle in the upper arm where shots are typically administered. If any inflammation ensues, it has more room to diffuse in the thigh, said Dr. Lisa A. Jackson, the lead author of the study and a senior investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle.

“In little kids the upper arm is very tiny,” she said. “You’re injecting the same volume of vaccine in the upper arm as in the thigh, which is a larger area. I think it’s just that it’s a larger muscle mass.”

The benefits, however, may not extend to other immunizations. The study, for example, also looked at shots for influenza and hepatitis A, and in those cases there was no meaningful difference between vaccinating in the arm or thigh for either toddlers or children ages 3 to 6.

In many cases, doctors choose where to administer a shot according to their own preference. But in the case of DTaP, at least, it makes more sense in general to give the shot in the thigh, Dr. Jackson said.

“Unless there’s a compelling reason not to, I would say veer toward giving the DTaP vaccine in the leg,” she said. “There’s less chance of a concerning reaction if you give it in the thigh versus the arm. So that should be the normal practice.”

Dr. Jackson stressed, however, that the absolute risk of a child having a reaction severe enough to warrant medical attention is still quite small, regardless of whether the shot is given in the arm or leg. The study found that it occurred in less than 1 percent of vaccinated children over all.

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Roche Hires Dr. John Reed to Lead Research Operations

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche is turning to a prolific American academic scientist to revitalize its lagging research operations.

Dr. John C. Reed, the chief executive of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in San Diego, will become head of Roche’s pharmaceutical research and early development group in April, the company announced Tuesday.

Dr. Reed, 54, has spent 21 years at Sanford-Burnham, formerly known as the Burnham Institute, the last 11 as chief executive.

During his tenure as chief executive, the institute grew rapidly, opened a new research site in Florida, and broadened its role from basic research to also doing drug discovery, in some cases in collaborations with pharmaceutical companies. It also received its largest donation ever, $50 million, from the credit card industry executive T. Denny Sanford, which led the institute to change its name.

Dr. Reed, 54, who holds both a medical degree and a Ph.D., is the author of more than 800 scientific papers, many dealing with why cancer cells do not commit suicide as errant cells are supposed to do. A triathlete, Dr. Reed used to get to his office around 3:30 a.m. each day, though now, with better computers, he works at home in the early hours.

“With his broad scientific and medical background, he is ideally positioned to drive Roche’s strategy of translating a better understanding of disease mechanisms into promising therapeutics,” Severin Schwan, the chief of Roche, said in a statement.

It is not unprecedented for drug companies to tap academic scientists to run research. Sanofi’s research and development is now run by Elias Zerhouni, the former director of the National Institutes of Health and professor at Johns Hopkins. Mark Fishman, a cardiologist at Harvard, was recruited to run research at Novartis, and Peter S. Kim, who heads research at Merck, was previously a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Reed, who has been on biotechnology company boards but never had a full-time corporate job, said in an interview that he was joining Roche to “have an opportunity to contribute on a larger stage, so to speak.”

At Roche he will oversee not only research but also early- and middle-stage clinical trials, something Sanford-Burnham does not do. He will supervise about 2,000 people with an annual budget in the billions, while Sanford-Burnham has about 1,200 people and a budget of around $175 million.

Dr. Reed, who will move to Basel, where Roche is based, said it was too early to discuss his agenda at Roche, other than to make its research more collaborative.

The operation Dr. Reed will run, called Pharma Research and Early Development, or pRED, does not include Genentech, the California biotechnology company that Roche fully acquired in 2009. In an effort to preserve the culture at Genentech, Roche left it autonomous, forming a group it calls gRED.

Recently, gRED has been eclipsing pRED. Roche’s three best-selling drugs, the cancer medicines Rituxan, Herceptin and Avastin, were developed at Genentech. So have some of its most attractive experimental drugs, including T-DM1, a breast cancer drug that could win regulatory approval early this year.

The organization Dr. Reed will run, by contrast, has had its share of problems in recent years. Several hundred researchers were cut in a corporate reorganization. And last year Roche discontinued development of a heart drug after it failed to work in a late-stage clinical trial.

The troubles contributed to Roche’s decision in June to shut its campus in Nutley, N.J., the birthplace of valium. At that time, Jean-Jacques Garaud, head of the Roche unit that Dr. Reed will run, left the company and was replaced on an interim basis by Mike Burgess. Roche said Tuesday that Mr. Burgess would now also leave the company.

Sanford-Burnham said that Dr. Kristiina Vuori, its president and head of its cancer center, would take over as chief executive on an interim basis. Dr. Vuori, who is originally from Finland, has worked closely with Dr. Reed.

M. Wainwright Fishburn Jr., the chairman of Sanford-Burnham, said it was “bittersweet” to see Dr. Reed leave. While the institute will lose a very successful leader, he said, the move could advance the institute’s efforts to get drug discovery work from pharmaceutical companies.

“We have one of our own in one of the most influential positions around,” he said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 15, 2013

A headline with an earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the drug maker. It is Roche, not Roches.

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IHT Rendezvous: 2012: The Year of Extreme Weather

The weather reports are in. 2012 was the hottest and the most extreme year on record in many places.

While parts of China are enduring the harshest winter in 30 years, the Antarctic is warming at an alarming rate. In Australia, out of control bushfires are partially the result of record-breaking weather (new colors were added to weather forecast maps, to account for the new kind of heat). In the United States, where Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New Jersey and New York and where extreme drought still lingers in the Midwest, the average temperature in 2012 was more than a whole degree Fahrenheit (or 5/9 of a degree Celsius) higher than average – shattering the record.

On Friday a long-term weather forecast for the United States was released, when the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee published a draft of the third Climate Assessment Report. Like last year’s weather, the assessment does not pull its punches.

“Climate change threatens human health and well-being in many ways, including impacts from increased extreme weather events, wildfire, decreased air quality, diseases transmitted by insects, food, and water, and threats to mental health,” write the authors as part of their key findings.

Experts from 13 federal agencies, including NASA, the State Department and the Department of Defense put together the report under the auspices of the United States Global Change Research Program.

While some predictions have been adjusted upward from previous reports, the difference in tone in this newest assessment is striking. The second assessment, published in 2009, predicted of thresholds that will be crossed, while the 2013 draft presents a reality in which some of the changes are already irreversible.

“As a result of past emissions of heat-trapping gases, some amount of additional climate change and related impacts is now unavoidable,” wrote the authors in the executive summary.

Adaptation to climate change is discussed in the new draft, which is open for public comment before it is officially released early in 2014. The authors write:

Planning and managing based on the climate of the last century means that tolerances of some infrastructure and species will be exceeded. For example, building codes and landscaping ordinances will likely need to be updated not only for energy efficiency, but also to conserve water supplies, protect against insects that spread disease, reduce susceptibility to heat stress, and improve protection against extreme events.

The authors predict that within the next several decades, temperatures will go up between 2 and 4 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly 1 and 2 degrees Celsius. The experts discuss a possible 10 degree Fahrenheit (or more than 5 degrees Celsius) warming by the end of the century, in the case that not enough is done to curb emissions. (The World Bank recently released a report of the dangers of a world warmed by 4 degrees Celsius).

Sea levels could rise up to four feet, or 1.2 meters, within the century, according to the experts.

Though official assessments, predictions and studies like these serve to reinforce what many already fear, they do not necessarily lead to policy change. Andrew Restuccia predicted in a Politico article that the new report would ultimately do little to change the embittered climate-change politics in that country. He wrote:

But don’t hold your breath for serious action on climate change in Congress. Republicans and some moderate Democrats remain opposed to measures to address climate change. The Obama administration, meanwhile, is moving forward with its own efforts on climate change, including beefed-up fuel economy standards and greenhouse gas regulations for new power plants.

Sometimes official assessment reports provide substance for those who question man-made climate change.

My colleague Andrew C. Revkin recently reported on how a revision by Britain’s Weather and Climate Agency on short-term global temperature forecast became fodder for climate change deniers. The fact that the government agency had revised its numbers downward allowed climate change skeptics to argue that the world was not significantly warming after all.

In December, Alec Rawls, a climate-change skeptic, made a name for himself by leaking an unpublished Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one of the major global players in climate change assessment. Mr. Rawls tried to argue that the panel’s language on solar radiation was an admission that much of the warming trends were caused by the sun, not human activity.

As Andrew reported at time, his claims were mostly debunked.

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Come for a Tour of China’s Unlicensed ‘World of Warcraft’ Theme Park

World of Warcraft Theme Park

Image credit Francesca Timbers

Click here to view this gallery.

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Changzhou, China is home to a bizzarre world of rides, food and fun: A World of Warcraft-style theme park that’s completely unlicensed by Blizzard, maker of the Warcraft series.

The park opened in the summer of last year. It reportedly cost $ 48 million to build and is “pretty huge,” according to Reddit user Francesca Timbers who originally posted these pictures republished here with permission.

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“I thought it was great,” posted Timbers. “A lot of the rides used 4-D and special effects, which I hand’t experienced much of before. There was a good roller coaster with loops, where you are lying horizontally, face forward, like you are flying. That was my favourite ride. The water log ride (‘splash of monster blood’) was pretty good too.”

Another weird tidbit: Some rides have a “happiness index,” showing, we believe, the intensity of the ride.

While most of the park is Warcraft-flavored, one section is dedicated to another Blizzard favorite: Starcraft.

For the rest of Timbers’ pictures and more details about her trip to the utterly weird theme park, visit her Reddit thread. Would you book a trip to China to get out to this theme park?

Images courtesy Francesca Timbers

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Title games feature Ravens-Pats, 49ers-Falcons

One game is a rematch. The other might feel like one — at least to one of the teams.

For the second straight year in the AFC, the New England Patriots will host the Baltimore Ravens with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line.

In the NFC, it will be San Francisco traveling to Atlanta, with the Falcons defense trying to stop a versatile, running quarterback for the second straight week.

"Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick are mobile quarterbacks who throw the ball at extremely accurate levels," Falcons safety Thomas DeCoud said. "We can use this game as a cheat sheet to prepare for next week."

On Sunday, the Falcons barely got past Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks, who overcame a 20-point deficit to take a one-point lead, but gave it up after Matt Ryan drove Atlanta into field goal range and Matt Bryant made a 49-yard kick with 8 seconds left.

Atlanta is the only team not making a repeat appearance in the NFL's final four. Last year, it was the Giants playing, and beating, the 49ers for the NFC title.

On Saturday, Kaepernick passed for 263 yards and rushed for 181 — a playoff record for a quarterback — to defeat Green Bay 45-31.

"We're one step closer to where we want to be," said Kaepernick. San Francisco hasn't been to the Super Bowl since 1995, when Steve Young led the 49ers to their fifth Lombardi Trophy.

Though the Niners must travel cross country for the game, they opened as 3-point favorites in a meeting of teams that played twice a year until 2003, when Atlanta was moved from the NFC West to the NFC South. Their only previous playoff meeting was a 20-18 win for the Falcons in the 1998 divisional playoffs. Atlanta won at Minnesota the next week to make its only Super Bowl.

San Francisco's 20-17 overtime loss last year to the Giants was part of a tense day of football that began with New England's 23-20 victory over the Ravens in the AFC title game.

In that game, Billy Cundiff missed a 32-yard field goal that would have tied the game with 11 seconds left.

This season, Justin Tucker beat out Cundiff for the kicker's job. Tucker hit a 47-yarder against Denver on Saturday to lift the Ravens to a 38-35 win in double overtime, extending Ray Lewis' career for at least one more week and putting the 17-year veteran one win away from his second Super Bowl.

"We fought hard to get back to this point and we're definitely proud of being here," Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco said. "We feel like it's going to take a lot for somebody to come and kick us off that field come the AFC championship game."

Lewis and the Ravens will have to stop the NFL's most potent offense. The Patriots put up 457 yards in a 41-28 victory over Houston, which left them one win away from their sixth Super Bowl in the 2000s.

"I think the two best teams are in the final," Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said. "Baltimore certainly deserve to be here and so do we."

The Patriots were made early 9½-point favorites against the Ravens.

These teams met in the regular season and that game was also decided by a kick — Tucker's 27-yard field goal that sneaked through the right upright for a 31-30 victory. Or did it?

While the Ravens were celebrating, Pats coach Bill Belichick ran to midfield and grabbed a replacement official's arm as he tried to exit the field. The NFL fined Belichick $50,000 for the gesture.

New England is the even-money favorite in Vegas to win the Super Bowl. San Francisco is next at 2-1, followed by Atlanta (5-1) and Baltimore (8-1).

Among the possible Super Bowl story lines:

—The Harbaugh Bowl. Jim Harbaugh coaches the 49ers and John Harbaugh coaches the Ravens.

—A rematch of San Francisco's 41-34 win at New England on Dec. 16 — one of the most entertaining games of the regular season.

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Recipes for Health: Skillet Beet and Farro Salad

“Comforting” isn’t a word I usually associate with salads, but this week I put together five grain salads that fit that bill. Over the years I have developed a number of delicious whole grain salads that combine various grains with vegetables, herbs and often nuts, tossed in a tangy dressing. I have also married many a grain and vegetable in a pilaf. I decided to bring both concepts together in hearty salads that I’m calling “skillet salads;” each one is heated through in a skillet just before serving.

You can get ahead on all of these by cooking the grains or noodles ahead. Whole grains freeze well and keep in the refrigerator for three days. Then it’s just a question of preparing vegetables, herbs and dressing. Even if you don’t cook the grains ahead you can prepare the other ingredients while they’re simmering.

I make a meal of these at lunch, and serve smaller portions as sides or starters for dinner. If you want to serve the warm, tangy grains on a bed of salad greens I recommend spinach or sturdy greens like frisée or dandelion greens that will stand up to the heat of the salad and won’t wilt beyond recognition when topped with something warm.

Skillet Beet and Farro Salad

This hearty winter salad can be a meal or a side dish, and warming it in the skillet makes it particularly comforting. Cook your farro until you see that the grains have begun to splay so they won’t be too chewy and can absorb the dressing properly.

For the Salad:

2 medium or 3 small beets, roasted

1 cup farro, soaked for 1 hour in 1 quart water

Salt to taste

1 ounce lightly toasted pistachios (scant 1/4 cup)

1/4 cup chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, tarragon, marjoram, chives, mint

Freshly ground pepper

For the Dressing:

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

Salt to taste

1 small garlic clove, minced or pureéd

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons walnut oil

Crumbled feta for garnish (optional)

1. Roast the beets and meanwhile cook the farro. Place in a medium saucepan with the soaking water and bring to a boil. Add salt to taste, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 45 minutes to an hour, until the grains have begun to splay. Turn off the heat and allow to sit for 15 minutes or longer in the water. Drain through a strainer set over a bowl.

2. While the farro is cooking, make the vinaigrette. Whisk together the vinegars, salt, garlic, and mustard. Whisk in the oils. Pour into a wide frying pan or saucepan and add to the farro, along with a couple of tablespoons of the farro cooking water. Peel and dice the beets and add, along with the herbs and pistachios. Stir over medium heat until heated through and serve, with a little feta sprinkled over the top if you wish.

Yield: Serves 6

Advance preparation: The cooked farro and the roasted beats will keep for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator.

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 304 calories; 19 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 5 grams polyunsaturated fat; 11 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 27 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 61 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 6 grams protein

Note: If you want to reduce the fat and calories in this dish, substitute buttermilk for some of the oil. Be careful not to allow the dressing to come to a boil when you heat it in the pan or the buttermilk will curdle.

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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DealBook: With U.P.S. Deal, European Antitrust Regulators Block Another Big Merger

European antitrust regulators proved again on Monday that they were more than willing to flex their considerable muscle.

U.P.S.‘s $6.9 billion bid for TNT Express is the latest merger blocked by the European Union, and certainly the most prominent since the proposed tie-up of NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse last year. In the case of U.P.S., European regulators argued that proposed asset sales, including airline operations, would not be enough to appease their concerns over the state of competitiveness in package delivery.

“We are extremely disappointed with the European Commission’s position,” the chief executive of U.P.S., D. Scott Davis, said in a statement. “We proposed significant and tangible remedies designed to address the European Commission’s concerns with the transaction.”

Other antitrust regulators have blocked mergers on antitrust grounds. For example, the Justice Department opposed AT&T‘s proposed $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA.

But the European Commission, led by Joaquín Almunia, has displayed an aggressive approach that has rankled some deal makers.

Mr. Almunia has acknowledged those concerns, even as he has sought to rebut them. In a speech delivered in November, the commissioner argued that he was not trying to prevent European companies from growing. But he said he was trying to preserve a competitive market place.

“It is simply not true that the commission is putting the brakes on the legitimate efforts of Europe’s firms to scale up,” he said. “What we must avoid are attempts to shield Europe’s companies from competition, in particular during this harsh period for the economy. In this game, only a few of them will benefit, and the majority will lose.”

Among Mr. Almunia’s arguments was that the European Commission was less concerned about high levels of market share than what mergers might do to prices.

In the case of the NYSE Euronext merger, regulators demanded that the two exchange operators sell off significant parts of their businesses. Chief among the European Union’s concerns were the strong position that the two companies would have in the market for derivatives traded on exchanges, leading to a call for the sale of either NYSE Euronext’s Liffe platform or Deutsche Börse’s Eurex unit.

Both companies protested, arguing that the European Union’s view of the market was too limited and did not take into account the broader market for derivatives traded off exchanges. The market operators eventually decided to call off their deal, believing that there was little hope for reversing regulators’ opinion.

Other deals have passed review, but some have required significant changes. In approving Universal Music Group’s takeover of EMI Music last year, for example, European regulators required the sale of a third of EMI’s assets. The decision has led to the auction of music labels like Parlaphone, the home to groups like Coldplay and David Guetta.

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