LONDON -- Lawsuits over alleged phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation are to be filed in United States courts for the first time.

Mark Lewis, the lawyer who has been at the forefront of efforts to expose phone hacking at newspapers opened by News Corporation's British subsidiary, expects to file civil lawsuits on behalf of three alleged victims.

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One is believed to be connected to the late Diana, Princess of Wales and the Royal household while a second is linked to the England soccer team. The third is described as a "Hollywood case" because the individual was in contact with a celebrity. All three claim that the offenses took place while they were on American soil.

 

The threat of legal action in the U.S. is likely to expose News Corp to further embarrassing claims and bring the scandal closer to its headquarters in New York.

Timeline: News Corp and the phone hacking scandal

Lewis was flying to San Francisco Thursday, from where he will travel next week to New York in order to meet with U.S. lawyers to discuss the cases.

In an email to msnbc.com Lewis confirmed reports that he expects to bring three lawsuits on behalf of clients and a fourth alleging wrongdoing at News Corp. He told the Daily Beast on Wednesday that the fourth lawsuit would center on "perhaps the dirty tricks that might have been used in order to further the commercial aims for News Corporation."

At least one of the cases involves allegations that the phone of a U.S. citizen was hacked, and Lewis said more U.S. victims of phone hacking were likely to emerge.

He told the Daily Beast: "This is getting wider. It's not just the people who were A-list or celebrities, but people who were in their circles — people who might call them or work with them."

Meanwhile, police regulators in Britain on Thursday said senior detectives showed poor judgment in their close relationship with executives at Murdoch's News Of The World tabloid.

A former executive at the newspaper, which was shut down in July 2011 amid public outrage at phone hacking revelations, was appointed as an adviser to London's Metropolitan Police, and his daughter also secured a job with the force.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission said professional boundaries at the police force "became blurred," the BBC reported. 

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By Ronnie Polidoro
Rock Center

As FedEx finishes hundreds of thousands of overnight deliveries for Valentine’s Day, one might guess that the arrow in the FedEx logo belongs to Cupid – and since it is the company’s second busiest holiday, you wouldn’t be too far off.

What today’s romantic procrastinators may not fully appreciate is that before Fred W. Smith founded FedEx in 1973, would-be Cupids had to plan ahead because overnight delivery wasn’t as streamlined as it is today.

Today, FedEx is not just the company’s name but a verb Americans use every day to describe what you do when something “absolutely, positively has to be there overnight,” as the company’s slogan advertised starting in 1978.  But dropping off a package in your office’s mailroom with an overnight Airbill is just the first step of a well-choreographed ballet.

“It never stops. It’s always going,” Sally Hammer, a 17-year FedEx veteran told NBC News.

NBC News anchor and managing editor Brian Williams witnessed FedEx’s choreography first-hand while sorting packages, filling letter bags and even ‘shipping’ himself in the jump seat of one of the company’s new Boeing 777’s.

Williams was unloaded at the FedEx World Hub in Memphis, where Rock Center received complete access to the “SuperHub,” which handles the bulk of the company’s overnight shipping operations.

Vice President of the Memphis World Hub, John Dunavant told Williams, “About 45 packages a second will move through here and when it's all done…we'll have done 500,000 packages.”

For example, a package traveling overnight from New York City to Los Angeles first takes a ride to Newark, where it’s loaded onto a plane to the SuperHub in Memphis. There, the package is taken to a sorting facility, where it’s placed label-side-up on a conveyor belt by a FedEx employee, then scanned, weighed and routed to the next plane departing for L.A.  

It gets a little more complicated on Valentine’s Day with more last minute packages.  Luckily there is a ProFlowers warehouse nearby that allows customers to place orders as late as 11 P.M. CT on February 13, to still arrive by 10 A.M. on Valentine’s Day.

As Tom Hanks’ character explained in the 2000 film Cast Away, the company measures its success not only by revenues earned but by time: on average, 10 million pounds of freight come through the Memphis facility every night, and each package must be sorted and boarded within five hours of arrival in order to reach its destination on time.   That five hour window is represented at the SuperHub by a clock with two competing times, Central Time – the actual time of day – and what FedEx employees refer to as Goal Time, the designated time that all packages must leave the facility to reach their overnight destinations.

In late 2011, FedEx introduced the Boeing 777 to its fleet (more commonly known around the SuperHub as the Triple 7, or as Rock Center staffers call it, The Plane That Delivered Brian), with engines so energy-efficient that its fuel capacity can power the plane to fly more than half way around the world non-stop.

After a night of hard work, Williams and FedEx’s founder and CEO, Fred W. Smith, sat down for an interview in front of one of the company’s beloved Triple 7s named Erica . All FedEx planes are given the name of an employee’s child.

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Smith, a former Marine and a veteran of the Vietnam War, outlined the basic idea of FedEx in his senior thesis at Yale University: with computers making businesses more and more efficient, “It was obvious to me that there had to be an entirely new logistics system that could get things from any point to any [other].”

On its first night of business, the company once known as Federal Express had more planes than packages. But 38 years later, in 2011, FedEx shipped 3 billion packages and took in $39.3 billion in revenue. 

“A lot of people make it work every day,” Smith told Williams. “The main thing is…to make sure everybody is pulling towards the same goal.”

That concept is understood at FedEx’s central command center, where 431 camera feeds of the Memphis SuperHub are displayed across 104 monitors in real time.

“Time is a very big issue; we want to make sure we push it to the limits,” says Flow Control Agent Antonio Vance, who monitors every package that comes through the hub and keeps them all moving smoothly.

But employees like Vance aren’t the only ones monitoring the company’s operations, as FedEx learned the hard way when YouTube viewers around the world were stunned by a shocking video of a FedEx employee throwing a computer monitor over a fence at a gated driveway.

According to Smith, FedEx had tried to deliver the package the day before, and the recipient left instructions to put it over the gate. 

“So that's what he did, in an incredible way,” Smith said, also adding that the reason the video was shocking to so many people was because “it was out of character of FedEx.” 

Smith is the first to acknowledge that slip-ups will occur from time to time. It wasn’t too long ago that he overnighted a personal package to a friend and his own company misplaced it.

“I wasn’t too happy about it,” Smith said. However, “The secret about management is really to make sure that the people that you work with are not afraid to deliver you bad news.  If you start killing the messenger…I can promise you, you won't know anything pretty quickly.”

Despite his obvious displeasure at the snafu, Smith generally remains a popular guy amongst his 300,000 employees worldwide and the 10,000 at the SuperHub: not only because his company is now the largest employer in the Memphis area but because employees and customers alike know that when they forget to mail a Valentine’s Day gift to their mom ahead of time, Smith’s company is there to help.

Editor’s Note: Brian Williams’ full report ‘Absolutely, Positively’  airs Wednesday, February 15 at 9/8c on NBC’s Rock Center.

When you call a company or government agency for help, there's a good chance the person on the other end of the line is a prison inmate.

The federal government calls it "the best-kept secret in outsourcing" — providing inmates to staff call centers and other services in both the private and public sectors.

The U.S. government, through a 75-year-old program called Federal Prison Industries, makes about $750 million a year providing prison labor, federal records show. The great majority of those contracts are with other federal agencies for services as diverse as laundry, construction, data conversion and manufacture of emergency equipment.

But the program also markets itself to businesses under a different name, Unicor, providing commercial market and product-related services. Unicor made about $10 million from "other agencies and customers" in the first six months of fiscal year 2011 (the most recent period for which official figures are available), according to an msnbc.com analysis of its sales records.

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The Justice Department and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons don't break down which companies they do business with. But Unicor said inmates provide private call center service, including data review and sales lead generation, for "some of the top companies in America" under a federal mandate to help companies repatriate jobs they have outsourced overseas.

In a fact sheet, Unicor asserts that prisoners in the program are less likely to re-offend and are better trained for full-time work upon release. All revenue goes back into the program, which "operates at no cost to the taxpayer," it says.

The idea has filtered down to some of the states, among them Georgia, Arizona and New York.

When New York residents call the Department of Motor Vehicles, for example, they might get an inmate at Greene Correctional Institution in Coxsackie, near Albany, or at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women near White Plains, on the border with Connecticut.

"Obviously, it saves taxpayer dollars," Brian Fischer, commissioner of the state Corrections and Community Supervision Department, told NBC station WNYT of Albany. "Number two, it provides what we call a transferable skill."

Besides saving the state money, said Elizabeth Glazer, the state's deputy secretary for public safety, the program is "an investment in our state's overall safety."

"When we help offenders build the workforce skills necessary to find viable employment after incarceration, we lessen the chances they will reoffend and end up back in the state's prison system," she said.

The corrections department acknowledged that callers aren't told they're talking to a state prisoner. But they stressed that callers are protected — no personal information is displayed to the prisoners, who don't have access to computers, officials said.

In the private sector, states usually partner with business-to-business firms to run the services — the companies provide the equipment and facilities, and the state provides the labor. One such firm is Televerde, a Phoenix company that partners with the Arizona prison system to provide marketing services for major companies that have included Hitachi and Microsoft.

In a marketing paper, Microsoft says companies like Televerde "can reduce the burden on corporate marketing and local marketing teams can have more meaningful interactions with their customers." (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC News.)

For inmates, the appeal isn't the pay, which can be as low as 50 cents an hour. It's the training and the opportunity: "A lot of times, we need to feel like we are appreciated, and it builds self-esteem," John Howard of Brooklyn, N.Y., an inmate at Greene, told WNYT.

"It allows me the opportunity to speak to different people of different nationalities, regardless of what ethnicity, and it makes me feel like 'Wow, I can do better,'" he said.

Read the original story at WNYT.com

But Danny Donohue president of the New York Civil Service Employees Association, criticized the program for prioritizing marketable skills for prisoners over providing jobs to "law-abiding citizens."

It's "a bad idea generally and even worse considering the current economy," Donohue said.

By M. Alex Johnson of msnbc.com and Bill Lambdin of WNYT-TV in Albany, N.Y. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

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Who is Mikhail Prokhorov? That’s easy. He is the most interesting man in the world!

Mikhail Dmitrievich Prokhorov, 46, is a singular figure in Russia and now the larger world. At 6 foot, 9 inches tall and thin, he is the Global Russian - very different from the short, dour New Soviet Man of decades past.

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A billionaire somewhere between 18 and 25 times over, he is a partying playboy who swears he has never tasted vodka. He is called Russia's most eligible bachelor and has been seen in the company of some of the world's most beautiful women. He is quick-witted, charming, droll and affable, someone who enjoys the spotlight, craves it in fact. In a literary sense, he is more Jay Gatsby than Dr. Zhivago.

Although he is a Russian patriot, he also is a man of the world. He travels in a $45 million Gulfstream V corporate jet and can't seem to keep track of his $45 million yacht. His watch is reportedly worth $138,000.

He owns a large house in one of Moscow's new gated communities. He’s been in a French court trying to retrieve a $30 million deposit he placed on what is purported to be the world's most expensive home -- the $700 million Villa Leopolda, built for a Belgian king on the Riviera. First he liked it, then he didn’t.

He owns an NBA team – the New Jersey Nets -- and part of a billion-dollar arena being built in Brooklyn. His business partner in both is the rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z. He’s received medals from the presidents of Russia and France and met U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the latter of whom suggested he’d like to play with Prokhorov in any pickup basketball game.

And now he’s running for president of Russia. Prokhorov was not born interesting. He arrived a simple comrade in the Soviet Union on May 3, 1965. His father was a member of the Soviet sports committee and his mother a scientist.

While privileged, his upbringing was nothing special for the day.  His parents sent him to English Special School No. 21 in Moscow, where he received a gold medal and was recommended by the local Komsomol (Young Communist League) for college admission.

But first, he did what other Soviet youths were required to do. From 1983 to 1985 -- at the height of tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union -- he served in the Soviet military. He also joined the Communist Party, though it doesn't appear he was ever much of a Communist. While in college, he sold stone-washed jeans -- his first capitalist venture-- under the brand name, "Yourself Jeans."

But all that presents only an inkling of who he is.  Let's start with the money.

Prokhorov went into banking after graduating from the Moscow Financial Institute with a degree in international economics. From 1989 to 1992, he was head of the International Bank for Economic Cooperation’s Management Board.

Then, in 1993, during the largely unregulated and highly controversial privatization of former state-controlled industries, Prokhorov and a partner, Vladimir Potanin, saw an opportunity. They engineered the purchase of Norilsk Nickel mines in Siberia through the then-small Uneximbank. He was 28 at the time, Potanin slightly older.

It was a bargain, but hardly an instant bonanza. Workers hadn’t been paid for six months and the arctic terrain was polluted beyond most Westerners’ comprehension, according to published reports. Early on, Prokhorov was Mr. Inside at Norilsk, working on pollution control and financing, among other things, and negotiating with Soviet-spawned labor unions on compensation.

Prokhorov doesn’t apologize for buying up dilapidated Soviet era properties for a song. He followed the rules, he will tell you. Some oligarchs succeeded more than others. He succeeded the most. He is credited with turning the inefficient Soviet nickel mines into one of the world's largest and most profitable natural resource corporations. And over the past decade he expanded his holdings to include palladium, gold and bauxite, from which aluminum is made.

(Not everything at Norilsk is yet up to Western standards. In spite of large-scale spending on pollution control technology -- about $100 million, according to the New York Times --  the company is still one of the world's worst polluters, emitting nearly 2 million tons of sulfur dioxide annually, more than the entire nation of France.) 

Detained, then honored
Prokhorov became more than just an intriguing industrialist in January 2007, when he was detained for allegedly arranging prostitutes for guests at his annual two-week long Russian Christmas party at the French Alps resort of Courchevel. He was released without charges after spending four days in jail, and none of the women was charged. He later received an apology from French authorities, apparently arranged by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. By 2011, he had been awarded the French Legion of Honor for arranging cultural exchanges.

Reports on the affair by French and Russian publications offered jaw-dropping glimpses of Prokhorov’s gilded lifestyle. Paris Match reported that when the women were detained and their luggage searched, lucrative gifts were discovered, valued at between 20,000 and 300,000 euros (approximately $25,800 to $387,000 at the exchange rate at the time). Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that Prokhorov engaged a "face patrol" at his favorite Courchevel haunt, "Les Caves," to filter out all but the most beautiful people.

He shrugged off his four days in French jail, noting that he had been a Soviet conscript.

Then there was the time he soiled one of the Soviet Union's -- and Russia's -- most historic icons: the Aurora, the Russian cruiser that fired the cannon blast that launched the Russian Revolution in 1918. Prokhorov rented the vessel permanently moored in St Petersburg in June 2009 for an evening of merrymaking to celebrate the first anniversary of his new magazine, the Russian Pioneer. The party became so rowdy that several millionaires jumped or fell into the Neva River and had to be fished out by authorities. Museum artifacts also were reportedly damaged.

Prokhorov’s reaction to the resulting controversy? He offered to buy the ship and restore it.

He is not beyond anger, though. When his sister was harassed and insulted by local youths at a Prokhorov Foundation event in 2009, he threatened business rivals who he said had paid them.

 “Since I was a child, I had a rule -- to punish crudity and disrespect towards women,” he wrote on his blog, according to a translation by the ReadRussia blog. “I see one simple and effective way to handle it: If the two gentlemen who financed this PR campaign do not apologize to my sister in the next two weeks, I will do what every man should: I will personally beat the @!$%# out of them."

Asked later if he was serious, he responded, "Do you have any doubts? Those responsible made their apologies to Irina."

All of this made him famous, at least in Moscow.  He was satirized on Russian television for his lavish lifestyle and his reputation as "Russia’s most eligible bachelor."

It also caused him problems with the prudish Kremlin. He was pressured to sell his 25 percent stake in Norilsk to another oligarch, Oleg Derispaska, the owner of RusAl, the world’s biggest aluminum manufacturer. Propitiously, the deal was completed just before the 2008 economic downturn, resulting in a bonanza for Prokhorov. He received nearly $5 billion in cash as well as stock in Polyus Gold and stock and debt in RusAl, now the main sources of his net worth. 

At that point, there was no stopping him. At a time when no one had cold hard cash, he was flush. He shrewdly diversified. 

By 2009, he had controlling interests in metals companies (Polyus Gold, UC RusAl), banks (Renaissance Capital, MFK Bank), media outlets (RBC, Snob and Russian Pioneer magazines, FIT television channel, F5 web portal/newspaper), insurance (Soglassye), real estate (OPIN Investment and Development Group), electricity production (Quadra) and LED technology (Optogan).

He also established a personal investment vehicle, ONEXIM, to control his various assets.

Entering the international arena
Then, in 2009, Prokhorov stepped onto the international stage.

The New Jersey Nets were a mess, stripped of talent and suffering through a 12-70 season under owner Bruce Ratner, who had suffered enormous losses as he tried to move the team from northern New Jersey to a $6.4 billion real estate development in Brooklyn called Atlantic Yards. But five years after the 22-acre project had been announced, lawsuit after lawsuit had caused delay after delay. To make things worse, Ratner faced a Dec. 31 deadline to sell $500 million in tax-exempt bonds to build the Nets’ arena, to be called Barclays Center. Without them the project was going to die not with a bang but a whimper. And 2009 was not an auspicious time to get financing for anything, let alone a beleaguered basketball arena.

Enter Prokhorov, who had played basketball and previously owned Euroleague power CSKA Moscow. He had been interested in buying the Knicks, but the Dolan family wasn’t selling. (Later after buying the Nets, he erected an 18-story billboard featuring him and business partner Jay-Z outside James Dolan’s offices at Madison Square Garden.)  An investment banker suggested an alternative, mentioning Ratner and his troubles.

A deal was stuck over dinner in Moscow, and it was every bit as shrewd as any of Prokhorov’s Russian maneuvers. According to ONEXIM and Nets officials, he laid down a little more than $200 million in cash and got 80 percent of the team; 45 percent of the billion dollar arena, and an option to purchase up to 20 percent of the overall Atlantic Yards project at a bargain basement price. In exchange, he agreed to assume 80 percent of the team’s astronomical debt load -- more than $221 million -- and pay up to $60 million to cover losses while the team was stuck in New Jersey. He also paid a $4 million buyout fee so the team could move out of its isolated and decrepit digs near the Meadowlands and into Newark’s gleaming new Prudential Center. Moreover, when bond rating agencies wouldn’t give the arena bonds an investment grade rating, Prokhorov agreed to sink another $76 million into the project. (He wasn’t doing it for charitable reasons. If his partners can’t pay it back at 11 percent interest per annum, he gets 80 percent of the arena.) 

Within weeks, a key eminent domain case was finally dismissed, the bonds sold and his investment was well on its way to his goal: a billion dollar valuation within five years.

When asked by a reporter at a May 2010 press conference in New York if his purchase was part of a larger effort by Russian oligarchs to buy up Western sports teams, he smiled and drolly intoned, “Please tell America, I come in peace.”

After he videotaped a message in his sister’s kitchen promising a championship in as little as one year and no longer than five, his reception from long-suffering fans long-suffering bordered on obeisance. At his first game as the team owner in October 2010, a steady stream of them approached the owner’s suite and thanked him profusely for buying the team. (Inside, bottles of Lafitte Rothschild 1982, valued at about $5,000 a pop, were scattered about for his guests.) 

One night a couple of fans found themselves on a train from New York to Newark with their favorite team’s owner and his entourage. The reason? When it looked like traffic would prevent his caravan of limos from making the game, he had jumped on New Jersey Transit. His spokesman distributed a video of the trip showing one of the world’s richest men standing in the aisle of a New Jersey commuter train, joking in Russian with his friends. 

He agreed to a “60 Minutes” profile that showed him in a trendy Moscow nightclub with scantily clad women half his age, posing with an AK-7, jet-skiing in the Maldives, working on his kick-boxing skills and claiming he really didn’t know where his yacht was -- it was docked in the south of France and available for lease for $325,000 a week. It was masterful image-making. Later, there was an only slightly tamer profile in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, headlined “An Oligarch of Our Own” The cover featured him legs spread slightly apart, looking ahead and holding out two basketballs as if astride the NBA world. 

Suddenly, the guy who dealt with gritty environmental problems at a mine north of the Arctic Circle was not just an NBA owner, but a bona fide international celebrity. Everyone wanted to meet him.

Maintaining mystique
Despite his fondness for the limelight, Prokhorov remained private in ways. He might spend nearly $18,000 on lunch at a Midtown restaurant, but it was the restaurant owner who bragged about it to the New York Post, not Prokhorov. He might spend $30 million on a vacation with friends in the south of France, as French media reported, but he wouldn't confirm it or boast about it. Of course, he didn't deny it either. He understands mystique.

Before entering politics, he refused to identify his favorite author, his favorite fictional character, even his favorite color. He said he didn't want the media or public to be aware of his "cultural biases." He did identify a favorite quote, from a French author: "Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

He still hasn’t revealed his favorite color but he did disclose that he is an atheist and that his favorite book is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” the magisterial work on life in Stalinist labor camps.

Prokhorov’s entry into Russian politics was similarly contradictory. A week after denying he had any interest in politics, he agreed this spring to head a small right-wing political party called “Right Cause.” it was seen as part of the Kremlin’s “managed democracy,” that is a party created to give the country’s leaders “friendly opposition” from the right.

He even met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the latter’s residence, where Medvedev praised him as “quite revolutionary” and arranged a photo op in which the two were seated across a table -- better than a side by side standing shot, since Prokhorov is a foot and a half taller than Medvedev.

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly as summer progressed.  Prokhorov poured money into the party, giving it publicity. He resigned as the head of his investment vehicle, ONEXIM, to devote all his time to politics. 

But in fall, something changed. Vladislav Surkov, who as head of presidential administration is in charge of the Kremlin’s “managed democracy,” began calling on the phone, Prokhorov later said, demanding changes in party personnel, in the party’s list of candidates.

Pushed by the Kremlin, the party finally ousted Prokhorov as leader in September.

Prokhorov responded by holding a news conference where he blistered Sukrov as the Kremlin’s “puppet master,” although he pointedly did not criticize either the president or prime minister. Then he dropped out of sight.

In apparent retaliation, Medvedev removed him from the Russian modernization commission and, ominously, Prokhorov’s application to have Polyus Gold listed on the London Stock Exchange was inexplicably delayed.

But as resentment mounted after Putin’s announcement of his candidacy for president on Sept. 24, Prokhorov got back in, declaring himself an independent candidate for the office.

Some critics see a Machiavellian hand behind Prokhorov’s political rebound, suggesting he is a “stooge” set up by the Kremlin to draw votes away from other opposition parties. He and those around him deny it.   

In the unlikely event he is elected president in March --  polls show him with numbers in the low single digits -- there are some hints of what a Prokhorov presidency  would look like:

By all accounts, he is calm in even the worst crisis and demands from his aides that they have Plans A, B, C, etc., at the ready.

He is not a hands-on manager, preferring to trust a cadre of loyalists in their 30s and 40s to run his companies. But if he doesn’t like what he sees, he is quick to let someone go. The day he took over the Nets, he summarily dismissed the coach.  

He is not a technocrat, having only lately begun using a cell phone. Although he claims he does not use a personal computer (too much information) and writes out his thoughts on yellow legal pads, his staff maintains both a personal website and a personal blog, regularly posting how he feels on life and business. He has recently branched out into Facebook and Twitter, but only because of politics. He told reporters in 2010, “I know of this iPad. I hope we never meet.”

On the other hand, no NBA team makes more use of the iPad, even drawing up plays on it. And he’s not afraid to invest in new technologies. His latest venture is a $150 million investment in an electric car called the “Yo,” which will go on sale later this year.

Politically, he is described as right of center, but liberal, somewhat like another basketball playing pol, Bill Bradley. He was friendly with Yelena Bonner, the late human rights campaigner and widow of Andrei Sakharov. He financed a memorial to Stalinist repression deep inside Russia.

He has said he won’t criticize Putin, but has also said the system will collapse in five years unless it’s dramatically reformed. He calls himself a serious candidate and has vowed to give up partying if elected. He told one interviewer he may even marry if Russia feels it needs a first lady. Most recently, he has been seen in the company of Ksenia Sobchak, described as the Russian version of Paris Hilton, having posed for Maxim magazine. 

Yet his quest for the presidency seems quixotic at best, cynical at worst. He still believes in the power of money. Shut out of state television, he tried to buy TV Rain, an independent satellite and online television operation. When that failed, he tried to acquire Kommersant, the Russian equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. No sale there either.

So he is resorting to using the social media. He has a YouTube channel where you can watch “This Week in Prokhorov” or his latest commercial, where dressed casually in a letter jacket and white shirt, he tells voters, “I want to work for you.”

He also makes clear that he wants to reform the system, not overthrow it. After all, few if any, have benefited more.

“Revolution in Russia always resulted in loss of life and reduced living standards,” he wrote recently on his blog.

He also indicated in other recent entries that he believes he is the right man to lead his country through what he sees as a pivotal period.

 “I believe that the next president must find in himself the will and courage,” he wrote. “And the people must clearly explain their vision and their actions. If he is honest, he will understand.”

“… As president of the various structures -- in business, and not just business -- I have often resorted to the unpopular measures. Yes, it's difficult. Yes, sometimes you come across a lack of understanding and acceptance even in the immediate vicinity. Yes, sometimes you're risking much …on a grand scale, sometimes everything. But when you can clearly see the situation, you see that there is no alternative but  to do this.”

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News and a Nets season ticket holder. 

How many stockbrokers can boast about a trade that brought in more than 200 times their investment over the past six weeks? Political pundits could, if they had the foresight to "invest" in GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich's prospects back in October.

The Iowa Electronic Markets make it possible to do such a deal: The IEM operation, sponsored by the University of Iowa's Tippie School of Business as a economic research project, is the only market in the country that has the tacit blessing of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to let traders lay real money down on political predictions. In other contexts, this might be known as a "bet."

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Here's how it works: You can buy up to $500 worth of shares in a political proposition — for example, the proposition that Gingrich will finish either No. 1 or No. 2 in January's Iowa GOP presidential caucus. If the proposition pays off, you'll be paid $1 for each share. If it doesn't, the shares are worthless. Thus, the share price on a given day should reflect the traders' assessment that the prediction will come true.

Researchers have reviewed the IEM's record since the Bush-Dukakis faceoff of 1988 and report that political prediction markets are at least as accurate as traditional political polling. During the 2008 presidential campaign, traders leaned toward a Democratic win more than a year before the actual election. Not much changed in the market after that year's party conventions.

Gingrich, however, has experienced a huge shift in fortunes over the past six weeks, on the political circuit and on the IEM: His Iowa caucus shares were trading at just 0.3 cents on Oct. 13, but on Tuesday they reached 69.1 cents. (Ron Paul has just edged ahead of Mitt Romney as the runner-up.)

"Gingrich is soaring," University of Iowa spokesman Tom Snee told me today. "He's actually gone up from yesterday. Today he's at 75 cents a share."

That means every dollar invested in Gingrich in mid-October would yield $250 today.

Now, before your head starts swimming at the prospect of making tens of thousands of dollars in the political game, here's a reality check: There's a limit to how much you can invest in an IEM proposition, and it's not just the $500 account limit.

"You can only buy something if it's available for sale, and we're not going to have 166,000 shares for sale," Snee said. Right now, there's only about $5,000 total invested in the Iowa caucus market. The entire value of investments in all of the IEM's markets is about $185,000, held by about 1,200 traders. You couldn't possibly have spent the whole $500 buying up Gingrich shares at 0.3 cents per share.

Here's how Iowa professor Joyce Berg, director of the IEM, explained the issue in an email passed along by Snee:

"All IEM contracts in the RCONV [Republican Convention] market are issued by selling bundles (one of each contract in the market) for $1.  Because exactly one of the contracts will pay off, the IEM has exchanged $1 for something that will be worth $1.  In your example, for a trader to spend $500 on contracts selling at $0.003, there would need to be $500/.003 = 166,667 Gingrich contracts available.  The only way that could happen is if other traders had spent $166,667 purchasing bundles. The funds to trade the hypothetical trader’s gains come from other traders.  That is, for every gain, there is an equal loss in the market.

"In other markets where traders can sell short, there are banks that guarantee the trades.  In the IEM, we don’t have that issue due to the way we use bundles to create contacts."

So if you were hoping to use your political acumen to pay for a condo, the IEM can't help you. But there are some potential bargains out there. Heck, just a couple of weeks ago, Herman Cain's Iowa caucus shares were trading at more than 25 cents each. Now they're worth a penny. If you have a hunch that Cain can revive his fortunes, there's money to be made. How's that for an economic plan?

More about prediction markets:

• 2012 political market open for business
• Market lays its bets on Oscars
• Buying into all sorts of predictions
• Flu forecasts come true
• Pentagon kills 'terror futures market'

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To handicap the political marketplace, check out NBC Politics on msnbc.com. And to find out what's going on in the financial markets, check in with msnbc.com's Business section.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

A notary public who signed tens of thousands of false documents in a massive foreclosure scam before blowing the whistle on the scandal has been found dead in her Las Vegas home.

NBC station KSNV of Las Vegas reported that the woman, Tracy Lawrence, 43, was scheduled to be sentenced Monday morning after she pleaded guilty this month to notarizing the signature of an individual not in her presence. She failed to show up for her hearing, and police found her body at her home later in the day.

It could not immediately be determined whether Lawrence, who faced up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000, died of suicide or of natural causes, KSNV reported. Detectives said they had ruled out homicide.

Lawrence came forward earlier this month and blew the whistle on the operation, in which title officers Gary Trafford, 49, of Irvine, Calif., and Geraldine Sheppard, 62, of Santa Ana, Calif. — who worked for a Florida processing company used by most major banks to process repossessions — allegedly forged signatures on tens of thousands of default notices from 2005 to 2008.

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Trafford and Sheppard were charged two weeks ago with 606 counts of offering false instruments for recording, false certification on certain instruments and notarization of the signature of a person not in the presence of a notary public. You can read a .pdf version of their indictment here.

Police said at the time that the alleged scam had thrown into question the legality of most Las Vegas home foreclosures in the past few years, leaving many people living in foreclosed-upon homes that they unknowingly don't actually own.

"I would suggest you review your documents and bring them to an expert and an attorney," said John Kelleher, chief deputy attorney general for Nevada's fraud unit.

I get tired just looking at this madness.

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The Thanksgiving holiday isn't stopping some shoppers from lining up at major U.S. retailers trying to get a jump on Black Friday.

Many stores including Toys R Us will open as early as 9 p.m. local time Thursday while Macy's, Target, Best Buy and Kohl's will open at midnight. Walmart slated “doorbuster” deals for 10 p.m. even though they were open Thursday along with Old Navy and Kmart.

The National Retail Federation says over 150 million people will spend money on Christmas-related gifts this year. And many are looking for markdowns.

Bargain hunters were already lining up, some having camped out since Wednesday night.

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In Pittsburgh, for example, TV station WTAE found many people already waiting in line outside the Monroeville Best Buy at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette displayed a photo of three friends in a tent outside at a Homestead Best Buy.

In Indianapolis, http://www.wthr.com/story/16117792/shoppers-hit-stores-early-in-hopes-of-black-friday-deals">NBC station WTHR reported the Meijer grocery and department store was jammed at noon. Some were shopping for last-minute dinner items, but others had lined up at 6 a.m. for a deal on iPads.

Anthony Pierluissi told WTHR that waiting in line for the deals is a family tradition - not just for shopping. “We make it a family thing," he said. "We all go out together and get stuff."

Brent Hart, 26, began camping out Wednesday on the sidewalk of the Fair Lakes Best Buy store in Fairfax, Virginia.

He was fifth in line and planned to purchase a $200 42 inch flat-screen TV and a $299 laptop. Hart is a military contractor leaving in December for Afghanistan and said he wants the laptop to stay in touch with his family.

NBC station WVTM in Birmingham, Ala., found more than two dozen people lined up at the Homewood Kmart store when it opened at 6 a.m. CST for pre-Black Friday deals.

Retailers concede the pressure is on.

"At the end of the day, we are trying to respond to what our customers want to do, and they are telling us that's when they want to shop," Mike Vitelli, president, Americas and enterprise executive vice president of Best Buy, told Reuters.

Update 4:50 p.m.: And that's the final count: Up 430 points, or 4 percent, at 11,239.97. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered two-thirds of the value it lost Monday, when it registered its sixth-largest decline ever.  The Nasdaq Composite Index — which also swung sharply back and forth all day — ended up 124.83 points, or 5.3 percent, at 2,482.52.

Latest Dow Jones Industrial Average

The wild swings Tuesday — as many as 450 points in a single hour — inspired  cartoonists with the same metaphor: the roller coaster. Click here for the slideshow.

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Update 4 p.m. ET: The wild day on Wall Street is ending with yet another surprise. After a couple of hours of massive swings (as many as 450 points in a single hour) the Dow Jones Industrial Average zoomed to its highest level of the day, to 11,239.97 — a 430-point gain over Monday.

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Update 3:30 p.m. ET: The Fed's pledge Tuesday to keep interest rates at record lows for two more years comes couched in downbeat assessments of the economy. At the same time, it indicated that it refuses for now to take further action, which appears to be giving markets fits. 

Msnbc.com's John W. Schoen says Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues "have very few cards left to play." 

"Since the Panic of 2008, the central bank has flooded the financial system with cash, spending $1.4 trillion to buy bonds backed by high-risk mortgages and snapping up another $900 billion in Treasury bonds," Schoen writes. "The Fed's easy money policy is designed to keep credit flowing after the collapse of a decade-long borrowing binge."

Neil Irwin of The Washington Post agrees, calling the statement "a modest step" and saying that "by explicitly stating the central bank's easy money policies — specifically, a short-term interest rate target near zero — for two more years, the Fed is hoping to lower interest rates throughout the economy to encourage immediate investment and consumption."

Matt Phillips of The Wall Street Journal noted that three members of the Federal Open Markets Committee voted against the statement.

"The market doesn't like the look of the dissension in the ranks on the FOMC. It's not just the folks at the extremely hawkish — meaning inflation focused — wing of the committee who were squawking about the change to the extended period language," Phillips writes.

But Joseph Arsenio, managing director of Arsenio Capital Management in Larkspur, Calif., was more optimistic:

"The reason the market is down is because slow growth over an extended period is embedded in that statement. I don't believe that will be the case. The Fed's ability to project growth has been poor. All this indicates is the Fed will tolerate a higher level of inflation."
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Update 3 p.m. ET: As the Federal Open Markets Committee released its statement Tuesday afternoon, the stock market dived sharply. Since then, it has been gyrating wildly, falling or rising as far as 175 points in minutes. 

A 3 p.m. ET, the Dow was down 59½ points, 320 lower than it had been a couple of times before the statement came out at 2:15 p.m. The Nasdaq composite index was down 16. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was down to 2.27 percent, its low for the year. Oil prices sank by $2.03 a barrel. Gold — a retreat for investors in tough markets — was up to a near-record $1,766 an ounce. 

There's still no way to definitively answer the question posed by Reuters: Will the Fed decision "be enough to put a floor on a U.S. stock market"? But early indications are that the answer will be "no."

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Update 2:30 p.m. ET: Reuters says it's "unclear whether the (Fed) decision, which involved no new commitment of funds for bond purchases, would be enough to put a floor on a U.S. stock market that has fallen more than 15 percent in the last two weeks."

That uncertainty appeared to be reflected on Wall Street, where the Dow swung sharply back and forth as investors digested the news. 

The Fed said economic growth was weaker than expected and that inflation was likely to "remain contained."

"The committee currently anticipates that economic conditions — including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run — are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013," it said.

 

Here's the full statement:

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in June indicates that economic growth so far this year has been considerably slower than the Committee had expected.  Indicators suggest a deterioration in overall labor market conditions in recent months, and the unemployment rate has moved up.  Household spending has flattened out, investment in nonresidential structures is still weak, and the housing sector remains depressed.  However, business investment in equipment and software continues to expand.  Temporary factors, including the damping effect of higher food and energy prices on consumer purchasing power and spending as well as supply chain disruptions associated with the tragic events in Japan, appear to account for only some of the recent weakness in economic activity.  Inflation picked up earlier in the year, mainly reflecting higher prices for some commodities and imported goods, as well as the supply chain disruptions.  More recently, inflation has moderated as prices of energy and some commodities have declined from their earlier peaks.  Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.

Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability.  The Committee now expects a somewhat slower pace of recovery over coming quarters than it did at the time of the previous meeting and anticipates that the unemployment rate will decline only gradually toward levels that the Committee judges to be consistent with its dual mandate.  Moreover, downside risks to the economic outlook have increased. The Committee also anticipates that inflation will settle, over coming quarters, at levels at or below those consistent with the Committee's dual mandate as the effects of past energy and other commodity price increases dissipate further.  However, the Committee will continue to pay close attention to the evolution of inflation and inflation expectations.

To promote the ongoing economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate, the Committee decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent.  The Committee currently anticipates that economic conditions--including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run--are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013.  The Committee also will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings.  The Committee will regularly review the size and composition of its securities holdings and is prepared to adjust those holdings as appropriate.

The Committee discussed the range of policy tools available to promote a stronger economic recovery in a context of price stability.  It will continue to assess the economic outlook in light of incoming information and is prepared to employ these tools as appropriate.

Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Charles L. Evans; Sarah Bloom Raskin; Daniel K. Tarullo; and Janet L. Yellen.

Voting against the action were: Richard W. Fisher, Narayana Kocherlakota, and Charles I. Plosser, who would have preferred to continue to describe economic conditions as likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period.

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Update 2:23 p.m. ET: The Dow Jones Industrial shot downward as soon as the Federal Open Markets Committee announced it was likely to hold key interest rates steady for the next two years. After coming close to a 250-point gain a couple of times Tuesday, the Dow had given back all its gains and was down about 30 points.

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Update 2:20 p.m. ET: The Federal Open Markets Committee says it will likely keep a key interest rate at a record low for two more years. Updates to come.

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Update 2:15 p.m. ET: After coming close to a 250-point gain a couple of times Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was falling in anticipation of a statement from the Federal Open Markets Committee.

Many economists were dubious about the prospect that the Federal Reserve committee would take strong action to stem losses on the markets (see below). At 2:15 p.m. ET, as the statement was scheduled to be released, the Dow was up 95.06 points had fallen back below 11,000 at 10,904.

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Update 1:48 p.m. ET: Gene Sperling, President Barack Obama's chief economic adviser, blames "hard-line" political posturing for the turmoil in the economy.

"Putting our economy first and our politics second is what's imperative" for a recovery, Sperling says in an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell. 

But he refuses to predict what the Federal Open Market Committee might do when it releases a statement at 2:15 p.m. ET.

"Smart economic advisers at the White House don't comment on the independent Federal Reserve," he said.

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Update 1:38 p.m. ET: The Federal Open Market Committee is expected to release a statement about 2:15 p.m. ET after its meeting. There's a lot of speculation about what, if any, concrete steps the Fed committee will take, but CNBC's executive news editor, Patti Domm, cautions that "the decline in financial markets is viewed as too fresh for the Fed to react to in any major way."

Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, tells Domm the Fed has few options left.

"I think what they should and will do is downgrade the growth outlook, downgrade the inflation run up and just say rates are going to stay where they are until the economy gets traction — essentially a downshifting of tone and that's it," LaVorgna said. "Effectively, there are no policy levers left."  

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Update 1:08 p.m. ET: The Treasury Department says Secretary Timothy Geithner spoke by phone with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Qishan, about "the challenges facing the global economy and the state of global financial markets."

The terse statement from Treasury gave no further details on the call, so it's not known what hey said. But China has been withering in its criticism of the Obama administration's economic policies in recent days.

In a commentary dated Wednesday, the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, wrote that Washington remains "hamstrung" economically and politically. Unless Washington rights the ship, Xinhua said, the current crisis will "depress global trade and send biting chills through many exports-dependent countries.

In what Reuters said might be a sign that Beijing's stance was softening, however, Premier Wen Jiabao urged nations Tuesday to work together to stabilize the markets.

"Speaking after a regular meeting by the Chinese cabinet, Wen alluded to debt problems in the United States and Europe and called on 'relevant' countries to implement responsible monetary policies and rein in fiscal deficits," Reuters reported.

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Update 12:45 p.m. ET: Economists are all over the map when it comes to whether the weakening markets mean the underlying economy is weakening.

In a note to investors, Merrill Lynch credit strategist Hans Mikkelsen said the sell-off over the past couple of weeks is a "reassessment higher of the probability that the US slips back into recession."

Monday's 634-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average "appears motivated by such continued economic fears, more so than the S&P's downgrade" of the U.S. credit rating last week, Mikkelsen wrote Monday, saying Merrill expected "very slow economic growth — but not the recession that appears to be increasingly priced into spreads."

Rather than the expected and actual US downgrade we think that the biggest factor behind the sell-off in corporate credit over the past couple of weeks — including today — has been an increase in the probability that the US economy will enter another recession in the not too distant future. For example our economists last week estimated a 35% probability of the US entering a new recession over the next year.

But Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, told The New York Times that that's not necessarily the case:

Admittedly, aside from the stock market slide, signs are not exactly great right now for the economy. But Mr. Shepherdson is taking heart from the 4.8 percent increase in chain store sales reported by Redbook Research during the first week of August compared with a year earlier.

Consumer confidence reports have been dismal recently, but Mr. Shepherdson points out that when you ask people "'how do you feel, they say 'miserable.' But that doesn't necessarily mean you don't go shopping."

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Update 12:25 p.m. ET: The impact of this month's market turmoil will be especially big on state budgets, many of which have already been slashed in recent sessions.

Virginia Finance Secretary Ric Brown said the state will likely have to make even further cuts in a projected budget that already has to account for required increases in school funding formulas, improvements to mental health care and greater contributions to the state pension fund.

Now "we will be reassessing all of that," in light of the market downturn, Brown told NBC station WVIR-TV of Charlottesville.

In Washington state, Gov. Christine Gregoire said agencies and workers must find additional budget cuts as high as 10 percent. That's on top of $4.5 billion in projected spending already identified in this year's legislative session, mainly coming from education funding, The Associated Press reported. 

"For every two steps forward in the recovery, it seems we are taking one step back," Gregoire wrote in a letter to state employees this week.

In Minnesota, Budget Commissioner Jim Schowalter said the market downturn will likely "have ripple effects throughout our economy."

Minnesota is already borrowing $700 million to help balance its current budget, Minnesota Public Radio reported, plus $500 million more to fund public works projects. Now, Schowalter said, the state will probably be forced to pay more to borrow.

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Update 12:04 p.m. ET: After a day of "serious extremes," the markets are experiencing an expected rebound, says Arthur Cashin, UBS Financial Services' director of floor operations. But "the key is 2:15," he tells CNBC. "What will the Fed say?"

 

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Update 11:51 a.m. ET: European markets are closing broadly higher: The FTSEurofirst 300 closed up 1.3 percent at 948.21, and the STOXX Europe 600 was up 3 percent at 232.31.

Reuters said traders were "rummaging around for bargains, with hopes the U.S. Federal Reserve will hint at a plan to revive the economy."

"Short-term, the market will hinge on what the Fed has to say, but we think the next few months will remain volatile," said Julian Chillingworth, chief information officer at Rathbones Brothers of London. "It is difficult to say whether now is the right time to buy."

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Update 11:32 a.m ET: The market turmoil  comes just as the Federal Open Market Committee is about to release a statement that could have a big impact.

Goldman-Sachs predicted the Fed "will take steps toward slightly easier policy":

After several months of disappointing economic data and the recent market rout, we forecast that the FOMC will take steps toward slightly easier policy at today's meeting. Specifically, we look for the committee to indicate that the size of its balance sheet will remain unchanged for an extended period of time-similar to the guidance it already gives for the level of the federal funds rate. We see a good chance that the statement will also include an explicit easing bias, signaling that the committee is monitoring economic and financial developments and is prepared to provide additional accommodation if necessary. Our forecasts assume that the Fed will eventually shift the composition of its Treasury purchases toward longer-duration securities, but we do not expect that step at today's meeting. Finally, the statement will undoubtedly include a downgrade of the committee's assessment of current conditions, perhaps acknowledging that weakness has been less transitory that anticipated.

"Given the turmoil in the market," ForexYard also expects "the Fed to take action:"

"(T)he Fed could change the wording in its statement to reflect its intention to hold interest rates at lows for a longer period of time," the online broker predicted. "The Fed could also signal its intention to hold longer maturity assets on its balance sheet. All of these would be a USD negative. A failure by the Fed to act may also unnerve investors which could be positive for the dollar."