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CURVES AHEAD: KATY PERY AND CO.

2010-12-24T02:11:00.001-08:00

It was bare skin, hot rockers and energy galore at tonight's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in New York City.

Tongues were wagging as the models strutted a gold glitter runway in everything from jungle-themed underwear to skimpy, barely there sportswear.

In the front row for the lingerie extravaganza? Maxwell, Russell Simmons, Debbie Harry, Malin Akerman, Adam Levine, Vin Diesel and Jared Followill.

See just how rowdy things got during the event...

MORE: Who was sorely missed at this year's show?

Kicking off the runway ruckus was an announcement that all cell phones and cameras could not be used. "Why would you be looking at them anyway during this?" asked the announcer.

Apparently this did not apply to Simmons, who texted throughout the entire show, with brief pauses to look up and snap pictures of the babes working the catwalk, which featured Angels Adriana Lima, Chanel Iman and Karolina Kurkova.

A performance by Katy Perry, whose body looked as slammin' as the models (for real) had the audience on their feet.

Akon was up next, and he sang as the girls strutted past and flirted with him. But he had one very unusual fan that was more vocal than anyone—a sunglass clad Diesel, who stood up and manically fist-pumped (Jersey Shore-style) throughout the number and screamed "Aaaaaakonnnnn!" over and over.

Apparently the two are friends, with Akon showing Diesel some love postshow backstage. The two hugged it out and laughed while Diesel once again screamed his name.

When we asked what was up with the crazy dancing, Diesel told us he was "just showing love."

"The wonderful thing about being in my position is that you can shamelessly show love, Give it up for everybody else," he said. "You don't have to be cool."

Obviously not.

His only competition in the attention-grabbing department (besides the girls on display) was Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine, who screamed at the top of his lungs and stood up to clap and whistle every time his smokin'-hot blond Russian model gal-pal Anne Vyalitsyna strutted her booty past him. (It was adorable though.)

And it clearly worked—she blew him a kiss form the runway more than once.

Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill showed up to support his brunette bombshell fiancée Lily Aldridge, possibly the hottest babe of the bunch, if that's even possible.

When we asked him if his gal rocks the Angel looks in the bedroom, he smiled and told us, "Uh, yeah." His favorite look? "The country one," he told us. We'd have guessed that.

Outside, things got a bit wild before the show, with bomb-sniffing dogs checking out the photogs' bags and the backstage area before the show, and people near the entrance offering to pay cash to people on line for tickets to get in.

The afterparty at Lavo drew Gerard Butler, Lukas Haas, Maxwell, a lovable Followill and Aldridge, who cuddled in a corner together, and models by the dozen.

The show airs as a special on CBS Nov. 20 at 10 p.m.

BOMB WAS SET TO EXPLODE OVER U.S

2010-12-24T01:53:00.001-08:00

A device found in the U.K. on a United Parcel Service Inc. plane last month was primed to go off over the Eastern seaboard of the U.S., British police said.

A forensic examination showed the device was set to explode at 10:30 a.m. British Summer Time, or 5:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, on Oct. 29, when the aircraft carrying it would have been somewhere over the Eastern U.S., police said.

After a tip from Saudi intelligence, British police intercepted the device—which originated in a shipment from Yemen—at East Midlands Airport at 3:28 a.m. Oct. 29 on a cargo plane bound for Chicago via Philadelphia. The plane left East Midlands at 4:20 a.m., after the suspect package had been removed. Explosives experts didn't disable the device, which was hidden in a printer cartridge, until around 7:40 a.m., police said.

The delay in disrupting the device—which would have put it within about three hours of detonating—may trigger further criticism that the U.K.'s response to the incident was slow.

A White House spokesman said the British findings "underscore the serious nature of the attempted AQAP attack and the challenge we all face in trying to prevent or disrupt such attacks."

A similar device was found at around the same time aboard a cargo plane in Dubai that had come from Yemen, via Qatar. The thwarted bombs heightened concern in the U.K. and U.S. over al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based group suspected of being behind the plot. AQAP is also thought by U.S. officials to have been behind the alleged attempt of a Nigerian man to bomb a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day last year.

A British police spokeswoman said it is hard to be more precise in stating where the device would have exploded, because factors such as tail winds, air-traffic control and the fact that cargo planes often reschedule routes make it hard to pinpoint a location at a specific time.

For those reasons, the bomb makers probably expected to bring down a cargo jetliner without full control of where the device would detonate, investigators in the U.S. have said.

AQAP appeared to carry out at least one test run in September, sending harmless household items on cargo flights, officials said, possibly to time the journey to Chicago using Internet tracking to monitor the shipments. U.S. officials say al Qaeda made an educated guess based on that test, and perhaps others, and set the timers in the packages accordingly.

While they would likely have known approximately when and where the package would have arrived, they wouldn't have known its route.

The bomb probably wasn't aimed at the U.K., British officials have maintained, because there was no reason the bomb makers would have known with any certainty the cargo shipment would pass through Britain.

The U.K.'s conclusion about the timing of the explosion contradicts a statement made by French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux last week, when he told French television the device was 17 minutes from exploding when the British intercepted it.

Both the U.K. and Dubai devices appeared to be wired with cellphone motherboards. However, the phone components didn't include SIM cards, suggesting they might have been built to be triggered by the phones' timers and not by outside phone signals, according to people familiar with the matter.

Authorities also have said it remains unclear whether the devices would have worked as designed had they not been intercepted.

British police said Wednesday that a man had been arrested in England's Midlands region for allegedly encouraging an act of terrorism in connection with the posting on a U.S.-based website of a list of U.K. lawmakers who voted for the Iraq war. The arrest followed the conviction last week of a woman for attempting to murder a top politician who had voted for the Iraq war. Roshonara Choudhry, 21 years old, had been influenced by Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born radical cleric connected to AQAP, according to people familiar with the situation.

—Adam Entous contributed to this article.

Write to Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com

Google battles to keep on

2010-12-23T03:14:00.001-08:00

Google Inc. is fighting off Facebook Inc. and other fast-growing Internet firms that are poaching its staff, a reversal for a company that has long been one of Silicon Valley's hottest job destinations.

Among the defectors are engineers such as Cedric Beust. The 41-year-old spent six years at Google working on projects like the mobile operating system Android. But by this year, "I was ready for something different and more challenging," he said.

Staff Defections to Facebook

Mr. Beust's job target list included Facebook, micro-blogging service Twitter Inc. and professional social-networking company LinkedIn Corp. After interviews at several of the firms, Mr. Beust in May joined LinkedIn as a principal software engineer.

Competition for experienced engineers like Mr. Beust is especially strong as Web start-ups ramp up their hiring and poach from established companies like Google.

Facebook and other start-ups have a recruiting tool that Google can no longer claim: They are private companies that haven't yet gone public, and can lure workers with pre-IPO stock. Recruiters say Facebook and others also pay competitively, with average annual salaries for engineers typically starting at $120,000.

"There's a huge shortage of engineers," said Valerie Frederickson, a recruiter in Silicon Valley. She said a recent client of hers who received a master's in engineering this spring from Stanford University got caught in a bidding war between Google, Facebook and others. He got hired with a $125,000 salary, and is now being offered $175,000 by the companies that lost out initially.

Facebook today has about 1,700 employees, up from 1,000 a year ago. Twitter now has 300 employees, up from 99 a year ago. LinkedIn said it started the year with 450 employees and expects to end the year with 900.

"It definitely is a little easier for us right now, compared to a lot of companies'' to recruit, said Colleen McCreary, the chief people officer of online gaming company Zynga Game Network Inc. The San Francisco company said it began the year with 500 employees and now has 1,250, including hires from large firms like Google and Microsoft Corp.

Much of the most recent hiring battles have centered on Facebook and Google. According to data from LinkedIn, 137 Facebook employees previously worked at Google. Among Google's recent departures to Facebook: Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Maps. Google Chrome architect Matthew Papakipos, Android senior product manager Erick Tseng, and top Google ad executive David Fischer also decamped to Facebook earlier this year.

To help attract new recruits and preempt defections, Google Tuesday said it was giving a 10% raise to its more than 23,000 employees. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt wrote in an all-hands email, "We want to continue to attract the best people to Google." Google declined to comment Wednesday.

To be sure, Google is also on a hiring spree and increased its work force by 19%, or 3,600 people, over the past year. To acquire some high-profile talent, Google has ramped up acquisitions of start-ups such as social app maker Slide Inc. And while Facebook is a huge draw now, it too has become too large for some employees, who have left to start other projects.

Hiring wars aren't uncommon in Silicon Valley, with mature tech companies long battling with up-and-coming start-ups for workers. A few years ago, Google was snaring workers from Yahoo Inc., Microsoft and others. Now, as Google's growth has slowed, it is finding the tables have turned.

Google is giving its 23,000 employees each a 10% raise, as competition for talent in Silicon Valley heats up. Amir Efrati and Eric Savitz explain how the move signals an escalating war between Google and Facebook, Inc. for top talent.

"Google isn't the hot place to work" and has "become the safe place to work," said Robert Greene, who recruits engineers for start-ups such as Facebook.

Facebook's social-networking technology and smaller size is also appealing, say some job seekers. Software engineer Murali Vajapeyam, 29, who left Oracle Corp. this year, said he interviewed at Google and Facebook.

"Facebook is more interesting," said Mr. Vajapeyam, who didn't land an offer with Facebook and ultimately elected to join a San Francisco software start-up in September.

Google and Facebook's recruiting battles come as the two companies increasingly appear to be moving onto each other's turf. Among other things, Mr. Schmidt has spoken about adding social-networking elements to Google's services.

In recent days, the companies have engaged in a public war of words over data-sharing practices. Google has complained that Facebook is engaging in "data protectionism" by not allow its users to export their friends' email addresses to other websites, including Google's.

Bankers Spying on you

2010-12-23T02:39:00.001-08:00

Big Banker is watching you—more closely than ever.

With lenders still skittish about making new loans, credit bureaus and others are hawking services that help banks probe deeply into your financial closet. The new offerings include ways to look at your rent and utility payments, figure out your income, gauge your home's value and even rate your banking habits based on details like whether your direct deposits have stopped.

All of this could influence your financial freedom—not to mention the number of junk-mail solicitations you receive.

Ken Lin, CEO of Credit Karma, a credit-score information website, knew he had a good credit score. But when he recently applied for a new credit card, he was rejected: The lender had flagged him as a higher credit risk because the value of his California home had declined and his mortgage principal wasn't declining—giving away that he has an interest-only mortgage.

"It's a lot more than just your credit score today," he says.

Mark Matcho

Your credit record still matters, of course. But here are some newer ways lenders and financial-services companies are sizing up your financial behavior and credit-worthiness:

• Bank-depositor behavior scores. Fair Isaac, the creator of the widely used FICO credit score, is marketing bank-depositor behavior scores, which are used by banks to assess their own customers.

The scores are based on balances, deposit records and withdrawal activity, says Debb Gordon, a senior principal consultant at Fair Isaac.

Unlike credit scores—which are most affected after payments are late or credit is maxed out—behavior scores can be a leading indicator of credit risk. They also can help banks identify which of their customers might be ripe for additional services and rewards programs and which might need special attention because, for instance, their direct deposits had stopped.

• Income estimation. This business took off earlier this year after the Federal Reserve allowed lenders to use credit bureaus' income estimates to satisfy new requirements that credit-card applicants show the ability to pay their debts.

The bureaus use credit-record information, such as the size of your credit lines and the age and size of your mortgage, and plug it into models to predict your earnings. Those estimates also may be used to double-check the income you report on credit applications or to determine if you should be preapproved for credit.

You can't see those estimates. But if you are denied credit because of them, you must be given a chance to provide additional information.

• Rent payments. An estimated 40 million consumers, including young people and people who prefer to pay in cash, have too little credit experience to generate a useful credit score. But they are likely to pay rent or utility bills, which could help credit bureaus better assess their credit-worthiness.

Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, bought RentBureau—which collects rental-payment data from large property managers—and expects to integrate that information into credit records before the end of the year.

Even if those consumers don't want credit, that information could help them win better rates from insurers, which may use insurance scores based on credit records, and fatten up thin credit files, which some employers check before making hiring decisions.

Credit bureaus say they also would like to offer data on cellphone payments, but have run into concerns over privacy issues, which may require legislation to untangle.

• Collection triggers. If you owe money, you can run, but you can't hide. Credit bureaus can now send daily reports to collection companies when a debtor's financial status changes—say, if new employment information appears or if a debt starts to decline. A drop in credit use would indicate that the consumer has more capacity to pay and a better chance of repaying other outstanding debts.

• Home values. As home values have plummeted and foreclosures have soared in many states, lenders of all stripes have become more cautious, as Mr. Lin found. Using home values as a factor in credit decisions doesn't appear to be widespread, but it may come into play when someone in, say, Nevada or California applies for a new loan. Of course, it also could work in your favor if you are one of the roughly 25 million Americans who owns a home outright.

• Your wealth. Information about your assets other than homes and cars, which aren't part of the credit record, may soon play a bigger role in your financial life. With a better sense of a consumer's balance sheet, lenders might be able to target potential customers better and also have a fuller sense of their likely risk. Equifax, another of the big three credit bureaus, offers financial-service providers an estimate of liquid wealth as part of a financial "suite" of information.

As all of this becomes a widespread practice, those who are prompt and careful in all aspects of their financial life may have more options—and those who have been sloppy with, say, their bank accounts may be penalized for that.

Write to Karen Blumenthal at karen.blumenthal@wsj.com