“Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence will not diet for role

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “The Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence will not be dieting for a role any time soon.

Lawrence, 22, who plays the famished Katniss Everdeen in the life-or-death thriller series, told Elle magazine in an interview to be published on November 13 that dropping a few pounds will not be part of her script.

“I’m never going to starve myself for a part,” Lawrence said, a view out of step with many in diet-obsessed Hollywood.

Lawrence’s figure in “The Hunger Games” raised eyebrows of some critics, who believed the actress looked a little too healthy for a character struggling to eat.

“I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner,” Lawrence said. “That’s something I was really conscious of during training…I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong – not thin and underfed.”

Suffering for a role by rapidly losing or gaining weight is part of Hollywood lore.

Natalie Portman was applauded for dropping some 20 pounds for her Oscar-winning role as a ballerina in 2010′s “Black Swan”. Likewise Robert De Niro nabbed an Oscar after packing on 60 extra pounds in 1980 boxing film “Raging Bull”.

Lawrence’s figure did not hurt the first installment of the “The Hunger Games” series, which was released in March and has grossed some $ 670 million worldwide. The actress has signed on for three sequels.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by David Gregorio)

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Nutella maker says will brave French tax hike

PARIS (Reuters) – The makers of the renowned Nutella food spread say they will not change the lucrative recipe even if France, its biggest market, endorses proposals to quadruple tax on a key ingredient of the gooey mix, palm oil.

Senators in France, where a left-wing government is hiking tax generally to help slash a bloated debt, have proposed a 300 percent tax hike on palm oil on the grounds that its production harms the environment and its consumption fuels obesity.

Frederic Thil, French director for Ferrero, the Italian firm that makes the sugary, chocolate-colored paste, sounded a defiant note in Le Parisien daily.

“The arguments are unfair and the repercussions would be catastrophic,” he told the newspaper.

More than 100 million jars of Nutella were sold in France alone in 2008, according to Ferrero, whose website says the recipe sold in large quantities across the Western world was invented in the backroom of an Italian pastry shop in 1944.

The main ingredients are sugar, milk powder, hazelnuts, cocoa, emulsifier, flavoring and palm oil, on which a tax of almost 100 euros per metric tonne is levied in France at the moment.

That tax would rise to 400 euros a tonne if the proposal floated by a Senate committee earlier this month secures majority backing in the Senate and in the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly.

France, which is keen to find other funding sources for a generous healthcare system in cash-strapped times, has already raised tax on sugary drinks and recently hatched plans to hike tax on beer to help plug the hole in public welfare finances.

Thil said the maker of Nutella, popular in many countries as a breakfast fare smeared onto slices of bread, would do all it could to limit the hit from any tax rise for consumers.

Palm oil, also extensively used in margarine, biscuits and crisps, makes up about 20 percent of the Nutella mix. The 300 percent tax rise, if passed on, would raise the cost of a 1-kilo jar or the spread by 0.06 euros, according to ASEF, an association of doctors that backs the tax hike proposal.

The other argument made for a tax increase is that it will encourage a shift away from intensive production methods that have prompted destruction of forests in countries such as Malaysia, a major exporter of palm oil.

(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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Four days later, Obama wins Florida

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - President Barack Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, ending a four-day count with a razor-thin margin that narrowly avoided an automatic recount that would have brought back memories of 2000.

No matter the outcome, Obama had already clinched re-election and now has 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206.

The Florida Secretary of State's Office said that with almost 100 per cent of the vote counted, Obama led Republican challenger Mitt Romney 50 per cent to 49.1 per cent, a difference of about 74,000 votes. That was over the half-per cent margin where a computer recount would have been automatically ordered unless Romney had waived it.

There is a Nov. 16 deadline for overseas and military ballots, but under Florida law, recounts are based on Saturday's results. Only a handful of overseas and military ballots are believed to remain outstanding.

It's normal for election supervisors in Florida and other states to spend days after any election counting absentee, provisional, military and overseas ballots. Usually, though, the election has already been called on election night or soon after because the winner's margin is beyond reach.

But on election night this year, it was difficult for officials — and the media — to call the presidential race here, in part because the margin was so close and the voting stretched into the evening.

In Miami-Dade, for instance, so many people were in line at 7 p.m. in certain precincts that some people didn't vote until after midnight.

The hours-long wait at the polls in some areas, a lengthy ballot and the fact that Gov. Rick Scott refused to extend early voting hours has led some to criticize Florida's voting process. Some officials have vowed to investigate why there were problems at the polls and how that led to a lengthy vote count.

If there had been a recount, it would not be as difficult as the lengthy one in 2000. The state no longer uses punch-card ballots, which became known for their hanging chads. All 67 counties now use optical scan ballots where voters mark their selections manually.

Republican George W. Bush won the 2000 contest after the Supreme Court declared him the winner over Democrat Al Gore by a scant 537 votes.

The win gave Obama victories in eight of the nine swing states, losing only North Carolina. In addition to Florida, he won Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada.

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Assad says will live and die in Syria

DOHA (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad said he would “live and die” in Syria and warned that any Western invasion to topple him would have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond.

Assad’s defiant remarks coincided with a landmark meeting in Qatar on Thursday of Syria’s fractious opposition to hammer out an agreement on a new umbrella body uniting rebel groups inside and outside Syria, amid growing international pressure to put their house in order and prepare for a post-Assad transition.

The Syrian leader, battling a 19-month old uprising against his rule, appeared to reject an idea floated by British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday that a safe exit and foreign exile for the London-educated Assad could end the civil war.

“I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country,” he told Russia Today television in an interview to be broadcast on Friday. “I am Syrian; I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”

Russia Today’s web site, which published a transcript of the interview conducted in English, showed footage of Assad speaking to journalists and walking down stairs outside a white villa. It was not clear when he had made his comments.

The United States and its allies want the Syrian leader out, but have held back from arming his opponents or enforcing a no-fly zone, let alone invading. Russia has stood by Assad.

The president said he doubted the West would risk the global cost of intervening in Syria, whose conflict has already added to instability in the Middle East and killed some 38,000 people.

“I think that the price of this invasion, if it happened, is going to be bigger than the whole world can afford … It will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” the 47-year-old president said.

“I do not think the West is going in this direction, but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next.”

QATAR, TURKEY CHIDE OPPOSITION

Backed by Washington, the Doha talks underline Qatar’s central role in the effort to end Assad‘s rule as the Gulf state, which funded the Libyan revolt to oust Muammar Gaddafi, tries to position itself as a player in a post-Assad Syria.

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani urged the Syrian opposition to set its personal disputes aside and unite, according to a source inside the closed-door session.

“Come on, get a move on in order to win recognition from the international community,” the source quoted him as saying.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu delivered a similar message, saying, according to the source: “We want one spokesman not many. We need efficient counterparts, it is time to unite.”

An official text of a speech by Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah showed he told the gathering: “The Syrian people awaits unity from you, not divisions … Your agreement today will prove to the international community that there is a unity … and this will reflect positively in the international community’s stance towards your fair cause.”

Across Syria, more than 90 people were killed in fighting on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Turkey’s Hatay border province, two civilians, a woman and a young man, were wounded by stray bullets fired from Syria, according to a Turkish official. Turkish forces increased their presence along the frontier, where officials have said they might seek NATO deployment of ground to air missiles.

Syria poses one of the toughest foreign policy challenges for U.S. President Barack Obama as he starts his second term.

International rivalries have complicated mediation efforts. Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have put Assad under pressure.

Syria’s conflict, pitting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels against forces dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, whose origins lie in Shi’ite Islam, has fuelled sectarian tensions across the Middle East. Sunni Arab countries and Turkey favor the rebels, while Shi’ite Iran backs Assad, its main Arab ally.

“VICIOUS CIRCLE”

The main opposition body, the Syrian National Council (SNC), has been heavily criticized by Western and Arab backers of the revolt as ineffective, run by exiles out of touch with events in Syria, and under the sway of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

British Foreign Minister William Hague said London would now talk to rebel groups inside Syria, after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week criticized the SNC and called for a new opposition body to include those “fighting and dying”.

But the plan for a body that could eventually be considered a government-in-waiting capable of winning foreign recognition and therefore more military backing ran into trouble almost as soon as it was proposed by SNC member Riyad Seif.

The meeting has so far been bogged down by arguments over the SNC representation and the number of seats the rival groups – which include Islamists, leftists and secularists – will have in a proposed assembly. Seif said he hoped for agreement on that on Thursday night, although the talks may continue into Friday.

Senior SNC member Burhan Ghalioun said the participants were moving towards consensus: “The atmosphere was positive. We all agree that we don’t want to walk away from this meeting in failure,” he told reporters.

Seif’s proposal is the first concerted attempt to merge opposition forces to help end the devastating conflict.

The initiative would also create a Supreme Military Council, a Judicial Committee and a transitional government-in-waiting of technocrats – along the lines of Libya’s Transitional National Council, which managed to galvanize international support for its successful battle to topple Gaddafi.

Michael Doran of the Brookings Institute in Washington told a forum in Doha it would not work for Syria. “It’s not a ridiculous idea, but it’s not going to succeed,” he said.

A diplomat on the sidelines of the talks said international divisions in the U.N. Security council did not help.

“It’s a vicious circle. They are asking the opposition to unite when they admit they are not themselves united,” he said.

(Writing by Tom Perry and Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Alistair Lyon, Alastair Macdonald and Philippa Fletcher)

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Social media shakes up solitary online FX trading

LONDON (Reuters) – The solitary world of online foreign exchange trading is emerging from the shadows as solo investors turn to specialist social media networks to link up with their peers and seek market-beating strategies.

Individual or retail trading, estimated at 8-10 percent of the $ 2.5 trillion daily spot FX market, used to conjure an image of a lone trader with little contact with the outside world.

But that is changing. Thanks to specially tailored websites known as social trading networks, users are able to see and even copy the trades of top-ranked rivals, swap ideas and gauge the market mood in online chat with a community of contacts.

“In the world of trading there are a lot of signals but social media gives us the market sentiment and it is ideal for chatting to people across the world for trade ideas,” said Patrick Orini, who has been trading FX online since 2004.

Retail forex traders make their deals using personal accounts through brokers such as Alpari, FxPro and IronFX. Increasingly, traders are hooking up their broker accounts with social trading networks, such as eToro, Currensee and Tradeo.

Traders usually pay a subscription to use the service while the social network and the broker might share revenue on trades.

In a system reminiscent of microblog network Twitter, top players who make their trades visible can gather thousands of followers, some of whom pay to copy their strategies.

Orini’s trading account on a social trading network called Tradeo has 500 followers, of whom around 20 copy his trades.

If online investors do well in their trades, they will attract more followers and will be ranked higher on the trader “leaderboard” posted on the site.

Retail FX has grown over the last decade as brokers allow individual traders to take highly leveraged positions previously accessible only to institutional investors. The largest group of market players is based in Japan.

eToro, one the world’s largest social trading platforms has processed more than 20 million trades since it went live at the beginning of 2012.

Tradeo, a social network for forex traders based in Tel Aviv, launched three months ago and, according to its co-founder and CEO Jonathan Adest, the site has posted up to half a billion dollars of trades from around 10,000 traders since then.

“It’s not a broker, but a network for brokers — a bit like an online trading room,” Adest said.

He said Tradeo also combats a key hazard of online trading — inaccurate or bogus information. Traders often swap ideas on comment boards, but anonymity and low security makes it difficult to weed out spam.

“The idea of creating a niche social network for forex traders is to help verify commentators usually found in chat rooms and comment boards,” Adest said.

In its increased use of social media, online forex trading is catching up with developments in the equities market.

Retail equities trading is estimated to account for up to half of trade in UK small companies. Retail FX’s smaller share of the overall market reflects the fact that most trade is over-the-counter and lack of volatility that make it harder to turn a profit.

TWITTER

In the equities market, analysis of Twitter postings and news headlines has been used to predict stock price movements.

London-based hedge fund firm Derwent Capital is launching a new spread betting application for retail traders in January that will use Twitter’s 350 million daily tweets to create a sentiment indicator covering currency pairs and other assets.

Social media makes existing currency market sentiment models more effective, said John Hardy, head of FX strategy at Saxo Bank.

“It would be a new way to measure “sentiment” in real time, something that banks can do already via how people are actually trading…but the Twitter measures might be able to bring new nuances and sophistication,” he said.

Arguably, solo traders who hook up to social trading networks are seeking an edge in the “wisdom of crowds”.

“The reason why so many people, like myself, do share their activity and ideas is to help each other and build the community,” Orini said. “I got so many valuable ideas from other traders, that I’m more than happy to share my ideas as well.”

(Editing by Nigel Stephenson)

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Andy Summers film documents surviving the Police

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Police guitarist Andy Summers has always been a multifaceted artist – musician, songwriter, photographer and author. Now he can add filmmaker to his extensive resume.

“Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police,” Summers’ 90-minute documentary film that chronicles his musical career and life with supergroup, has its world premiere at the DOC NYC festival in New York on Friday.

Summers, who narrates the film, describes it as “a musical journey” that uses live footage from the 2007-2008 Police reunion world tour, along with lots of archival material from both the early Police days and the London punk scene.

“But it’s not done as a chronological story,” he told Reuters. “We establish the fact we’re doing the reunion tour early on, and then it dips in and out of live Police concert footage, and then starts going back to the earlier days.”

Based on his 2006 memoir “One Train Later,” the documentary also incorporates rare footage dating back to the 1960s, when Summers, now 69, was involved with the early British rock scene and seminal artists including British vocalist and keyboard player Zoot Money and Eric Burdon. The film also features many still photographs that the rock star took along the way.

“I was always interested in photography, so it was very natural for me to document everything, whether it was backstage at some grungy club or on early tours with the Police,” he said.

“So there’s a lot of intimate moments and interesting shots and archival stuff, especially in the first 25 minutes of the film, with the Sex Pistols appearing and so on.”

BUMPING INTO FAME

Following his book’s lead, the film also documents the serendipitous nature of the formation of the Police, one of the biggest bands in rock history, when Summers “just happened to bump into” drummer Stewart Copeland in a London Underground station one day in 1977.

The two decided to have coffee and discuss forming a new band with a then-unknown singer called Sting, whom they had just met.

“One train later, and it all might never have happened,” recalled Summers, “which is why I titled the book ‘One Train Later.’”

He would have preferred that title for the documentary. “It’s much hipper and doesn’t pander to the obvious Police connection,” he said, “so I’m hoping at some point we’ll change it to that.”

Inevitably, the film also focuses on the breakup of the always-combustible and often acrimonious trio.

“It’s obviously a very painful and poignant moment, when we all realize, ‘Well, that’s it,’” Summers said of the 2008 footage documenting the band’s final dissolution.

“The camera lingers on all our faces, and you can see the raw emotion there. It’s very bittersweet.”

As for rumors that the Police may re-form yet again for another tour, Summers does not think that is likely, even though their 30th reunion tour grossed more than $ 350 million.

“But then I never thought we’d get back together to do the last tour, so I never shut the door on anything,” he said. “I personally think that my book was somewhat of a provoking agent in getting the Police reunited, so maybe this film will do the same thing again.”

(Reporting by Iain Blair, Editing by Jill Serjeant, Patricia Reaney and Lisa Von Ahn)

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Setback for first malaria vaccine in African trial

LONDON (Reuters) – The world’s first potential malaria vaccine proved only 30 percent effective in African babies in a crucial trial, calling into question whether it can be a useful weapon in the fight against the deadly disease.

The surprisingly poor result for the vaccine, which GlaxoSmithKline has been developing for three decades, leaves several years of work ahead before a protective malaria shot could be ready for countries that desperately need one.

Malaria, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease, kills hundreds of thousands a year, mainly babies in Africa, and scientists say an effective vaccine is key to hopes to eradicate it.

Philanthropist Bill Gates, who helped fund the GSK vaccine’s development, said further research was now needed to see whether and how it might be used.

“The efficacy came back lower than we had hoped, but developing a vaccine against a parasite is a very hard thing to do,” he said in a statement.

Results from the final-stage trial with 6,537 babies aged six to 12 weeks showed the vaccine provided “modest protection”, reducing episodes of the disease by 30 percent compared to immunisation with a control vaccine, researchers said on Friday.

That efficacy rate a year after vaccination is less than half the 65 percent in an earlier trial in babies which analysed protection rates after six months. It is also a lot less than the 50 percent rate seen in five to 17 month-olds.

Vaccinating babies, rather than toddlers, is the preferred option, since the new vaccine could then be added to other routine infant immunisations. A separate programme for older children would involve a lot of extra costs.

Eleanor Riley, a professor of immunology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said the results showed that GSK’s vaccine, called RTS,S or Mosquirix, is potentially useful, but “not the complete solution”.

“The slightly lower than expected efficacy will … affect the cost-benefit analysis that health providers and funders will have to undertake before deciding whether the vaccine represents the best use of limited financial resources,” she said.

NOT GIVING UP

Despite the setback, Britain’s top drugmaker said it would push ahead with developing RTS,S and GSK Chief Executive Andrew Witty said it could be an important tool in fighting malaria.

“We’ve been at this for 30 years, and we’re certainly not going to give up now,” he told reporters on a conference call.

GSK does not expect to make any profit from the vaccine, which would only be sold in poor countries.

Witty reiterated a promise that if RTS,S is ultimately approved for market, it would be priced at cost of manufacture plus a 5 percent margin, and the margin would be reinvested by GSK in malaria research.

Given the target market, it is governments and international groups that will fund the vaccine’s roll-out, and they now need more positive data before deciding whether it is worth buying.

“We will have to have more information to give us a clearer idea as to how useful this vaccine will be,” said Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI Alliance, which funds bulk-buy vaccination programmes for poorer nations.

In particular, Berkley told Reuters he wanted to see longer-term data, including the effect of booster shots, and an analysis of how the vaccine performed in different settings.

Details of the malaria trial, which is Africa’s largest ever clinical trial involving almost 15,500 children in seven countries, were presented at a medical meeting in Cape Town and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Witty said he would have liked to have seen efficacy rates of around 50 percent in infants, but stressed that more data would become available before the trial ends in 2014 which may throw more light on why rates of success are so variable.

“It may open up a more customised approach to how this potential vaccine gets used,” he said.

Malaria is caused by a parasite carried in the saliva of mosquitoes. It is endemic in more than 100 countries worldwide and infected around 216 million people in 2010, killing around 655,000 of them, according to the World Health Organisation.

Control measures such as insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor spraying and anti-malaria drugs have helped cut cases and deaths significantly in recent years, but scientists say it will take an effective vaccine and many more years work to wipe out malaria.

Scientists around the world are working on other potential malaria vaccines but RTS,S is by far the furthest ahead in development.

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Obama: U.S. voted for tax hikes on rich

President Barack Obama makes remarks on the "fiscal cliff" in the East Room of the White House (Kevin Lamarque …Claiming a mandate from his election romp over Mitt Romney, President Barack Obama announced Friday that he had invited Congressional leaders to the White House next week for talks on how to steer the battered economy away from a "fiscal cliff." Obama said he was open to compromise with Republicans—but that any final deal needed to raise taxes on the richest Americans.

"This was a central question during the election," the president said in brief remarks in the East Room of the White House. "It was debated over and over again, and on Tuesday night we found out that a majority of Americans agree with my approach.

"Our job now is to get a majority in congress to reflect the will of the American people," Obama said. "I'm not wedded to every detail of my plan. I'm open to compromise. I'm open to new ideas. I'm committed to solving our fiscal challenges. But I refuse to accept any approach that isn't balanced."

The president, who did not take questions on Friday, campaigned in part on a plan that would extend most of the Bush-era tax cuts, but allow them to expire for individuals making more than $200,000 or families pulling in $250,000. Republicans have said they want to prolong all of those rate reductions.

Obama said, as he has all year, that this means both sides agree on extending the middle-class reductions—and that doing so should not require "long negotiations or drama. ... Let's extend the middle-class tax cuts right now. Let's do that right now." (Republicans have resisted; extending those rates would reduce the party's leverage on tax hikes affecting the wealthy).

Republican Speaker John Boehner, speaking shortly before the president's appearance, said he was looking to Obama "to lead" and that he had a short, "cordial" conversation with the president earlier this week about ways to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.

"I think we both understand that trying to find a way to avert the fiscal cliff is important for this country," Boehner said. "And I'm hopeful that productive conversations can begin soon so we can forge an agreement that can pass the Congress."

Boehner reiterated his opposition to raising tax rates as part of that deal, even on high-income earners, and says he sees the negotiations as a way to overhaul the tax code and the way the federal government pays for entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. (Boehner's emphasis on tax rates suggests a possible opening for a compromise that focuses on raising revenue by closing loopholes, which is also a part of Obama's plan).

Obama said he was "encouraged" by the speaker's comments.

The so-called "fiscal cliff" refers to a series of tax increases and deep spending cuts scheduled to occur Jan. 1, 2013 if Obama and his Republican foes fail to reach a deal. They include the expiration of a payroll tax cut and the Bush-era reductions in tax rates, the end of some unemployment benefits, and draconian reductions in domestic and military spending triggered because of the failure of the Congressional "Super Committee" to find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years.

Just how bad would it be if the president and House Republicans held hands and took the country over the cliff, Thelma & Louise style (or maybe à la Homer Simpson)?

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, Washington's gold standard for such analysis, warned in a report released Thursday that the consequences could be dire, including a drop in Gross Domestic Product of 0.5 percent in 2013, and a rise in unemployment to 9.1 percent by the end of next year.

The CBO report also noted that extending Bush-era tax cuts for individuals making under $200,000 per year or families making below $250,000—while letting the reductions on higher-income Americans expire—would boost the economy by 1 ¼ percent by the end of 2013. This reflects Obama's preferred course. Extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, noted the report, "would have a relatively small effect on output for dollar of budgetary cost."

"The American people understand that we're going to have differences and disagreements in the months to come. They get that," Obama said. "But on Tuesday, they said loud and clear that they won't tolerate dysfunction, they won't tolerate politicians who view compromise as a dirty word—not when so many Americans are still out of work."

"What the American people are looking for is cooperation, they're looking for consensus, they're looking for common sense. Most of all they want action," the president said. "I intend to deliver for them in my second term, and I expect to find willing partners in both parties to make that happen.

"So let's get to work."

Chris Moody contributed to this report.

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Ghana building collapse traps dozens, kills 1

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A five-story shopping center built earlier this year in a bustling suburb of Ghana‘s capital collapsed Wednesday, killing at least one person and leaving several dozen people trapped in the rubble, authorities and eyewitnesses said.

Rescue crews used cranes to try and remove debris from the top of the building amid fears that machinery sifting through the wreckage could injure trapped survivors. Crowds of bystanders gathered as rescuers sifted through cement and glass.

The fatality at the Melcom Shopping Center at Achimota, a suburb of Accra, was confirmed by Public Affairs Officer of the Ghana Fire Service Billy Anaglate. “We are still working to find out the fate of others who may be trapped under,” he said.

Other officials told The Associated Press that the death toll was likely to rise.

An AP reporter at the scene saw at least one man pulled from the debris, covered in dust and who was then whisked into an ambulance.

A Greater Accra Regional Public Affairs officer, deputy superintendent Freeman Tettey, confirmed that one person died and told the AP that 51 have been rescued and sent to hospitals around the capital.

“I was on my way to the shop when l saw it crumpling down,” Kojo Boadi, an eyewitness, said.

President John Mahama declared the scene a disaster zone and cut short his election campaign in the north of the country to be able to visit the site. The presidential election is scheduled for December.

The five-story store opened in February is part of the Melcom chain owned by Indian immigrant magnate, Bhagwan Khubchandani. His late father arrived in Ghana in 1929 as a 14-year-old to work as a store boy in the-then Gold Coast.

The store sells a variety of cheap, imported household goods and appliances that are popular with working-class Ghanaians.

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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