Media Decoder Blog: In Wake of Restructuring, NBC News President Quits

8:30 p.m. | Updated

The longest-serving president of any of the three network news divisions, Steve Capus of NBC News, stepped down from his position on Friday, six months after Comcast restructured its news units in a way that diminished his authority.

Pat Fili-Krushel, chairwoman of the NBCUniversal News Group, said in a brief telephone interview on Friday that she would “cast a wide net” while searching for a successor to Mr. Capus. In the interim, the leaders of the news division will report directly to her.

Ms. Fili-Krushel became Mr. Capus’s boss last July when Steve Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, consolidated all of NBC’s news units — NBC News, the cable news channels MSNBC and CNBC, and its stake in the Weather Channel — under a new umbrella, the NBCUniversal News Group. Mr. Burke asked Ms. Fili-Krushel, one of his most trusted lieutenants, to run it, while keeping Mr. Capus and the heads of the other units in place.

Ms. Fili-Krushel worked early in her career at HBO and Lifetime. A veteran of the Walt Disney Company, where she helped program ABC, and  Time Warner, where she was an administrator, she is by her own admission not a journalist.  But now she is, by default, the highest-ranking woman in the American television news industry — not just at the moment, but in the history of the medium. The heads of the news divisions at ABC and CBS are men, as are the heads of the Fox News Channel, CNN, and Bloomberg.

Ms. Fili-Krushel has kept a low public profile, but has been a forceful presence behind the scenes, recently moving from her office on the 51st floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, near Mr. Burke’s, to a new one on the third floor, where NBC News is based. On Friday, she said she had spent her first six months “learning, listening and getting to know the players here.” She called the News Group an “unbelievably strong organization.”

Though Mr. Capus’s exit saddened many at NBC News on Friday, it came as little surprise. He had previously reported directly to Mr. Burke, but after the restructuring he reported to Ms. Fili-Krushel, and he made no secret of his unhappiness with the change. His contract had a clause that allowed him to leave in the event that he no longer reported to Mr. Burke, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement at NBC, and he decided to exercise that right after months of contemplation. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized by the network to speak publicly.

Mr. Capus told Ms. Fili-Krushel of his intent to leave last Friday. It is likely that he would have left sooner, but a series of major news stories kept him busy late last year — including Hurricane Sandy, the presidential election and the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Mr. Capus also oversaw the network’s response to the kidnapping of Richard Engel and an NBC News crew in Syria last month.

“It has been a privilege to have spent two decades here, but it is now time to head in a new direction,” he wrote in an e-mail to staff members on Friday afternoon.

Mr. Capus guided NBC through a revolutionary time in news-gathering and distribution. He maintained the news division’s profitability, managed tensions between NBC News and its increasingly liberal cable channel MSNBC, and fostered new business ventures like an in-house production company and an annual education summit. Last year, he unwound an old deal with Microsoft to give the news division complete control over its Web site, now named NBCNews.com, for the first time.

Ms. Fili-Krushel wrote in a separate e-mail to staff members that “NBC News is America’s leading source of television news and Steve has been a big part of that success.”

NBC News is the producer of the most popular evening newscast in the country. But its single biggest source of profits, the morning show “Today,” fell to second place last year, behind ABC’s “Good Morning America,” for the first time since the 1990s. The decline caused widespread anxiety inside the news division and speculation that Mr. Capus would be relieved of his duties.

Inside NBC, both Mr. Capus and the executive producer of “Today,” Jim Bell, received much of the blame for the botched removal of Ann Curry from “Today” last June, which worsened the show’s already tenuous position in the ratings. Ms. Fili-Krushel was put in charge just a few weeks later.

Mr. Bell was replaced at “Today” last fall and is now the executive producer for NBC Olympics. Savannah Guthrie is now the co-host of “Today,” and Ms. Curry is a national and international correspondent for the network, but is rarely seen. Mr. Capus’s exit was seen by some at the network as the last shoe that had to drop.

In his e-mail to staff members, Mr. Capus called it an “extremely difficult decision to walk away,” noting that he started at NBC as a producer 20 years ago this month. He did not make any mention of what he would do next. “Journalism is, indeed, a noble calling, and I have much I hope to accomplish in the next phase of my career,” he wrote.

“Today” continues to lose to ABC’s “Good Morning America” among total viewers, but lately it has won a few weeks in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic that advertisers covet.

“NBC Nightly News” has more successfully fended off ABC’s “World News,” despite an aggressive push by ABC. Mr. Capus said, “NBC News has grown in all key metrics — from ratings and reputation to profitability.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/02/2013, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: In Wake of Restructuring, NBC News President Quits.

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Energy Secretary to Depart, as Administration Vacancies Mount

Energy Secretary Steven Chu will leave office soon, possibly by the end of this month, he told colleagues in an e-mail this morning, according to Energy Department employees.

His departure had been widely expected, although as late as Thursday afternoon he was refusing to answer questions on the subject. The open slot at the Energy Department adds to a constellation of vacancies at the top of related agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Department and the Interior Department.

President Obama said in a statement that Dr. Chu “brought to the Energy Department a unique understanding of both the urgent challenge presented by climate change and the tremendous opportunity that clean energy represents for our economy.” The president said that in the four years of Dr. Chu’s tenure, “we have doubled the use of renewable energy, dramatically reduced our dependence on foreign oil, and put our country on a path to win the global race for clean energy jobs.”

He also praised Dr. Chu for expanded support for research into “groundbreaking innovations that could transform our energy future.”

Dr. Chu presided over a $90 billion surge in expenditures in which the Obama administration tried to use the Energy Department to accomplish twin goals: stimulating the economy, and advancing energy efficiency and clean energy production. Dr. Chu said that some of the money would be used to “swing for the fences,” promoting a variety of ventures, of which some were certain to fail. But the successes would more than compensate for the failures, he said, especially in the area of research and development, where key scientific breakthroughs could nurture whole new industries, he said.

The commercial verdict may not be delivered for some years to come on many of those investments. The initial outlook for the Obama administration’s clean energy programs like wind and sun has been dimmed by the success of an Energy Department initiative of the 1990s, developing a method for drilling horizontally in shale formations and fracturing the rock to liberate natural gas, known as fracking, which cut the price of fossil energy just as the renewable technologies appeared poised to reach price parity.

Dr. Chu, a physicist, is the first cabinet secretary to come into office with a Nobel Prize (an honor he shared in 1997 for his work with supercooled atoms) and the first scientist to lead the department. His 15 predecessors as secretary included a dentist, an admiral from the nuclear navy, a former electric utility lobbyist and a variety of political figures.

But his scientific stature was such that he escaped the most severe criticism by Republicans when the department faced its biggest attack, over the bankruptcy of Solyndra, an innovative solar equipment company that got a $535 million loan guarantee from the department but declared bankruptcy because the market for its product had collapsed. Republicans accused the White House of cronyism, noting that among Solyndra’s investors were some Obama campaign donors. But Dr. Chu was generally exempted by Republicans, or at worst, written off as outside his depth in financial matters.

While he had the political skills to manage the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its 4,000 employees, his job before he was chosen by Mr. Obama to be energy secretary, he also showed a physicist’s penchant for speaking the truth plainly, in a way that people in politics generally avoid.

In September 2008, before Mr. Obama was elected, he told The Wall Street Journal, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," a quote that Republicans in Congress have used to hammer him. Three months earlier, in a lecture he gave in Washington on energy, he said that new houses could be made energy-efficient with an investment of an extra $1,000, “but the American consumer would rather have a granite countertop.”

And he demonstrated technical skill almost unheard-of for a cabinet secretary. He was dispatched by Mr. Obama to Houston to take control of some of the federal efforts after the Deepwater Horizon blowout of April 2010. He assembled a team of nuclear physicists to consider the options, and made some key decisions.

Also still uncertain is the fate of a giant infrastructure nurtured by Dr. Chu’s Energy Department for manufacturing batteries for electric cars, because demand for the cars has not reached anticipated levels. Appearing on Thursday at the Washington Auto Show, he indicated that the administration was unlikely to reach its goal of one million electric vehicles on the roads by 2015.

And the more exotic research projects – in advanced batteries, or technologies for making gasoline from plants and trees, or improving on photosynthesis as a way to store the sun’s energy – were always expected to take far longer to pay off.

Meanwhile, despite enthusiasm from Dr. Chu, the department’s efforts to nurture the construction of new nuclear plants have mostly fallen flat; inheriting a $17.5 billion fund for loan guarantees for new nuclear energy plants, and proposing an additional $35 billion, the department never succeeded in making a loan. Following up on a campaign promise by Mr. Obama, his department closed down the effort to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, but did not reach the point of starting a process to find another site. And the department has lagged in its efforts to clean up radioactive wastes left over from decades of nuclear weapons production.

A vocal proponent of efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions, he served in an era when his party could not get a bill through Congress to institute a “cap-and-trade” system, or any other method, to limit such emissions.

Dr. Chu sent a letter to the department staff early on Friday, focusing on the department’s work on climate change, clean energy and research. He said he and his wife were eager to return to California and that he would return to academic work.

Dr. Chu will turn 65 on Feb 28. He told colleagues he would stay in place until the end of the annual “summit” of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program, known as Arpa-e, an energy version of the better-known Darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

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Google moves closer to resolving EU investigation

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Google has offered to take specific steps to allay competition regulators' concerns about its business practices, in a major move towards ending a two-year investigation and avoiding billions of dollars in fines.

The European Commission said on Friday it had received detailed proposals from the world's most popular search engine, which has been under investigation following complaints from more than a dozen companies, including Microsoft, that Google has used its market power to block rivals.

If the commission accepts the proposals under its settlement procedure, it would mean no fine and no finding of wrongdoing against Google.

Companies found to be in breach of EU rules can be fined as much as 10 percent of global turnover, which could mean up to $4 billion if there is no satisfactory resolution in Google's case.

EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told Reuters he had received Google's submission, but declined to give details of the proposal.

"We are analyzing it," he said.

Google spokesman Al Verney said the group continues to work cooperatively with the commission.

The company ranks first in Internet searching in Europe, with an 82 percent market share, versus 67 percent in the United States, according to research firm comScore.

Lobbying group ICOMP, whose members include complainants Microsoft, Foundem, Hot-map, Streetmap and Nextag, said any solution should include measures ensuring that rivals could compete on a level playing field with Google.

The FairSearch coalition, whose members include online travel agencies and complainants Expedia and TripAdvisor, said a third-party monitor should be appointed to ensure that Google lives up to any promises.

The commission, which acts as competition regulator in the 27-member European Union, is now expected to seek feedback from Google's rivals and other interested parties, before launching an official market test.

Last month, Google won a major victory when U.S. antitrust regulators ended their investigation, saying the company had not manipulated its web search results to block rivals.

The commission has said Google may have favored its own search services over those of rivals, and copied travel and restaurant reviews from competing sites without permission.

The EU executive is also concerned the company may have put restrictions on advertisers and advertising to prevent them from moving their online campaigns to competing search engines.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Rex Merrifield and Hans-Juergen Peters)

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UK: No charges for Australian royal hoax DJs

LONDON (AP) — British prosecutors said Friday they will not press charges against two Australian DJs over the royal hoax call that preceded a nurse's suicide.

Two Australian DJs impersonated Queen Elizabeth II and her son, Prince Charles, as they phoned London's King Edward VII hospital in December to ask about the condition of the Duchess of Cambridge, formerly Kate Middleton, who had been hospitalized for treatment of acute morning sickness stemming from her pregnancy.

Nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who put the call through to a colleague who in turn described the details of Kate's condition, was found hanged in her room three days after the prank was broadcast across the world.

Prosecutors on Friday said there was no evidence to support a charge of manslaughter, and despite "some evidence" to warrant further investigation of offenses under Britain's Data Protection Act and Malicious Communications Act, any potential prosecution would not be in the public interest.

The Crown Prosecution Service said that decision was taken because it isn't possible to extradite from Australia for those potential offenses, and because "however misguided, the telephone call was intended as a harmless prank."

DJs Michael Christian and Mel Greig —apologized after Saldanha's death in emotional interviews on Australian television, saying they never expected their call would be put through.

The radio show behind the call, the "Hot 30" program, was taken off air following Saldanha's death and later canceled.

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SciTimes Update: Recent Developments in Science and Health News

Michael Probst/Associated Press

Baby hedgehogs in Germany.

Friday in science, clues to owls’ backwardness, fresh dangers to the seas and the launch of a giant kite. Check out these and other headlines from around the Web.

Phil Marino for The New York Times

Physicists monitored data from heavy ion collisions in the control room at Brookhaven National Laboratory particle collider in 2007.

Felix Ordonez/Reuters

A snowy owl.

Hedgehog Bacteria: Sonic the Hedgehog may have a dark side. The Associated Press reports that in the last year, 20 people in the United States were infected, and 1 person died, from “a rare but dangerous” type of salmonella bacteria. All the cases, health officials said, were linked to hedgehogs that were kept as pets.

More Bad News for the Seas: National Geographic reports that buried beneath the waves are rich deposits of “gold, copper, zinc, and other valuable minerals,” and that is attracting the attention of the humans on the land above. Mining the minerals is not easy, but one company has already obtained an extraction contract for the waters off Papua, New Guinea, the magazine says.

Less Money for Science: Lean days are ahead for recipients of federal government contracts, and that knowledge is having an impact on physics research. Scientific American reports that a federal advisory panel has recommended closing a particle collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.

Spinning Heads: Owls are able to do something that parents only dream about: swivel their heads completely around to see what is going on behind them. An illustrator and a physician at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine discovered that they can do so without severing their arteries or preventing blood from reaching their brains because of holes in their neck bones, which may hold air sacks that cushion the movement of the head, and because the vertebral artery is able to expand and hold reservoirs of blood for the brain, a LiveScience video explains.

Setting Sail in Space: A new solar sail, the largest yet, will be launched by NASA in 2014. Looking very much like a gigantic kite, it will eventually reach 2 million miles from Earth (that’s a lot of string!), Popular Science reports. And besides blazing the way for further research of this type, the mission has another purpose: “Sunjammer will be carrying the cremated remains of various individuals, including the creator of Star Trek,Gene Roddenberry, and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry. It is not exactly the Enterprise, but Sunjammer will be boldly going where no solar sailing spacecraft has gone before,” Popular Science says.

Video by NASAMarshallTV

Solar Sail Readies for Early Warning Mission

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DealBook: Capital One Hires Centerview Executive as Finance Chief

Capital One Financial said on Friday that it had hired Stephen S. Crawford, a top executive of the boutique investment bank Centerview Partners, as its chief financial officer.

He will join Capital One on Monday as chief financial officer designate, and on May 24 will formally replace Gary L. Perlin, who will retire. Upon joining the bank, Mr. Crawford will report to its chairman and chief executive, Richard D. Fairbank.

It is a return to the world of big banks for Mr. Crawford, a former chief financial officer and eventually co-president of Morgan Stanley. He made his mark as an adviser to financial institutions, helping orchestrate deals like Fleet Bank’s $49 billion sale to Bank of America.

At Centerview, he advised Capital One on its $9 billion purchase of the American online banking arm of ING.

“I have watched the transformation of Capital One over the last decade and have the greatest admiration for Rich and his strategic vision for the company,” Mr. Crawford said in a statement. “It is an honor to take on this important role and I look forward to continuing to help create a great company and bring value to our investors.”

Mr. Crawford isn’t the only deal-making investment banker to make the jump to the chief financial officer position of a client. In 2011, NBC Universal named Stuart J. Epstein, a top media banker at Morgan Stanley and a longtime adviser to corporate parent Comcast, as its chief financial officer.

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The TV Watch: Tina Fey Signs Off ‘30 Rock,’ Broken Barriers Behind Her

Tina Fey leaves prime time television pretty much the way she entered it seven years ago, as a sly observer who bites the network that feeds her so much material.

Ending its run on Thursday night, “30 Rock,” the show Ms. Fey created, helped write and starred in, was a witty sendup of network television that cut uncannily close to the bone. It seemed at times almost like a transcript of production meetings at the NBC headquarters, at 30 Rockefeller Center. Ms. Fey made use and fun of everything that NBC holds sacred, including product placement, corporate synergy and some of its most venerable stars.

In a recent episode Ms. Fey’s character, Liz Lemon, is thrilled to be included in a celebration of “80 under 80.” Liz explains that the event honors “women in entertainment who aren’t Betty White.”

It’s funny, but the remark is also Ms. Fey’s way of deflecting attention from her own stature. For a new generation of female writer-performers who now have their own sitcoms, at least partly thanks to her, Ms. Fey is the new Betty White, a figure so accomplished, beloved and irreproachable that it’s almost impossible not to joke about her.

On “The Mindy Project,” on Fox, the doctor played by Mindy Kaling (like Ms. Fey, Ms. Kaling is the creator as well as the star of her show) riffles through an asthmatic male co-worker’s shoulder bag for an inhaler. She finds among other things a copy of Ms. Fey’s best-selling book, “Bossypants,” and demands to know why he is reading it.

Gasping, he replies, “I wanted to see how Tina Fey could juggle it all.”

The final episode of “30 Rock” is a one-hour special that sort of ties up loose ends but mostly gives its creator one last chance to don a disguise that was delightful and also the weakest part of the show.

Ms. Fey cast herself as a slovenly, aimless nerd who is a pushover at work and, for much of the series, single and hapless at home, the kind of person who was happy “eating night cheese and transitioning pajamas into day wear,” as Liz Lemon says of herself. Ms. Fey is better at writing — and impersonating Sarah Palin — than she is at acting. She was never fully convincing in the role of a loser.

“30 Rock” was modeled on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in many important ways, except for its heroine. Liz was not a goody-goody perfectionist like Mary Richards, or, by her own admission, Ms. Fey herself. Disciplined, ambitious type-A’s can be comical, as Ms. Moore, and later Candice Bergen, the star of “Murphy Brown,” proved. But Ms. Fey, who was the first female head writer of “Saturday Night Live,” chose as her alter ego a dumpy sad sack who just happened to be the head writer of a late-night sketch comedy show.

She created deliciously absurd characters like the silkily self-possessed network executive Jack Donaghy, played brilliantly by Alec Baldwin, and the insane comedian Tracy Jordan, played by Tracy Morgan, by grafting familiar show-business phenotypes onto those actors’ inner nuttiness. Ms. Fey borrows shamelessly from real life, except when it comes to her own success. It may be that she plays against type because she is uncomfortable with the deadly earnest role of trailblazer. But she is one.

There have been plenty of female comedy writers before she came along — Diane English (“Murphy Brown”) and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (“Designing Women”), to name but two, as well as notable performers who created their own characters and carried their own comedy shows like Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Tracey Ullman and Roseanne Barr. But before Ms. Fey there were almost no women on network television who created and wrote their own shows and starred in them. One of the more notable exceptions dates to the days of black-and-white: Gertrude Berg created, wrote and starred in a hit radio comedy about a Jewish matriarch in the Bronx that was turned into a CBS sitcom, “The Goldbergs,” in 1949.

When “30 Rock” had its premiere in 2006 Ms. Fey was that rare thing, a female writer starring in her own prime-time network show. She has moved on to movies, starring with Paul Rudd in a new comedy, “Admission,” to be released in the spring.

She doesn’t leave television in a vacuum. Now of course Ms. Kaling has her Fox show; Lena Dunham has “Girls” on HBO; and Whitney Cummings, who created and stars in “Whitney” on NBC, also is a co-creator of the CBS comedy “2 Broke Girls.” Amy Poehler, who like Ms. Fey is a “Saturday Night Live” alumna, is one of the writers as well as the lead of “Parks and Recreation” on NBC.

Ratings were never the real measure of the reach of “30 Rock.” Those only peaked in 2008, immediately after Ms. Fey’s dead-ringer impersonation of Ms. Palin on “Saturday Night Live” stoked audience interest. Critical praise and a deluge of Emmy Awards, so many that Ms. Fey has joked about it, are a better gauge of the show’s influence. So are the celebrity cameos.

It doesn’t take much to coax politicians and television anchors to make comic cameos anymore — Brian Williams is practically a regular on “30 Rock,” and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. let Ms. Poehler swoon over him on a recent episode of “Parks and Recreation.” But “30 Rock” had an even greater appeal, drawing famous people who are not particularly known for self-mockery, including Condoleezza Rice (in her cameo the former secretary of state is furious that her ex-boyfriend Jack broke up with her by text), Oprah Winfrey and the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi. In the final episode Ms. Pelosi gives a mock-television interview denouncing Jack Donaghy as an “economic war criminal.”

Ms. Fey is a pioneer who resists being taken too seriously. She prefers to be revered for her irreverence. But one sign of her influence is her ability to persuade powerful, sensible women to go on “30 Rock” and make fools of themselves.

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U.S. appeals court denies Apple in Samsung patent fight

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Thursday rejected Apple Inc's request to revive its bid for a sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone, dashing the iPhone maker's attempt to recover crucial leverage in the global patent wars.

Apple had asked the full Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. to revisit a decision in October by a three-judge panel of the same court. The panel rejected Apple's request to impose a sales ban on Samsung's Nexus smartphone ahead of a trial set for March 2014.

In October, the court raised the bar for potentially market crippling injunctions on product sales based on narrow patents for phone features. The legal precedent puts Samsung in a much stronger position by allowing its products to remain on store shelves while it fights a global patent battle against Apple over smartphone technology.

Apple wanted the full Federal Circuit, made up of nine active judges, to reverse the earlier findings. But in a brief order on Thursday, the court rejected Apple's request without detailed explanation.

Representatives for Apple and Samsung could not immediately be reached for comment.

(Reporting By Dan Levine; Editing by John Wallace and Grant McCool)

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Beyonce to finally face media in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Beyonce is expected to face the media Thursday as she previews her halftime performance at the Super Bowl. But the focus will likely be on her performance at that other big event earlier this month.

The superstar hasn't spoken publicly since it was alleged that she lip-synched her rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at President Barack Obama's inauguration last week. Her critically praised performance came under scrutiny less than a day later when a representative from the U.S. Marine Band said she wasn't singing live and the band's accompanying performance was taped. Shortly after, the group backed off its initial statement and said no one could tell if she was singing live or not.

It's expected that the halftime performance will be a main focus of her afternoon press conference, even though she'd likely rather concentrate on questions about her set list for Sunday and her upcoming HBO documentary, "Life Is but a Dream." The documentary is being shown for the media just before Beyonce speaks and takes questions, as expected.

There has been plenty of speculation about Beyonce's Super Bowl performance, including reports there would be a Destiny's Child reunion with Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland (Williams has shot down such speculation). Some are also curious about whether her husband, Jay-Z, will join her onstage, as they often do for each other's shows.

Beyonce has teased photos and video of herself preparing for the show, which will perhaps be the biggest audience of her career. Last year, Madonna's halftime performance was the most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance ever, with an average of 114 million viewers. It garnered more viewers than the game itself, which was the most-watched U.S. TV event in history.

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Follow Nekesa Mumbi Moody at http://www.twitter.com

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SciTimes Update: Recent Developments in Science and Health News

NASA

Researchers tracked the movement of carbon monoxide molecules orbiting a black hole within the galaxy NGC 4526 to determine its mass.

Thursday in science, possible advances in cancer diagnosis, weighing black holes, shocking photos from space and good news for a breed of penguins. Check out these and other headlines from around the Web.

How Heavy Is That Black Hole?: Concerned about the weight of black holes? ScienceNews.org reports that astrophysicists associated with the European Southern Observatory have developed a new technique to more accurately measure the masses of supermassive black holes.

A New Cancer Test?: Invasive tests to diagnose cancer could soon be a thing of the past, Scientific American reports. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have been looking at whether RNA fragments, called exosomes, which are shed from cancer tumor cells and can be detected in cerebral spinal fluid, blood and urine, can be analyzed to diagnose cancer types and evaluate the disease’s progression.

False Claims About Flu Relief: Flu sufferers are often desperate for relief, but the Food and Drug Administration is warning that scams abound. USA Today reports that the F.D.A. issued a warning letter about one flu-relief product, GermBullet, accusing its manufacturers of making a “false and misleading promotional statement” by claiming the substance reduces bacteria and viruses.

Tainted Steriods Law Suits: The first lawsuit has been filed in Nashville against a clinic where hundreds of people received spinal injections of a tainted steroid that caused meningitis and other side effects in 693 people nationwide and 45 deaths as of Monday. The Tennessean said that Wayne Reed, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease and was being cared for by his wife, Diana Reed, is suing the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgery Center and its owners, seeking $12.5 million in damages for Diana’s death from fungal meningitis. Denise Grady wrote about the family in October.

More Baby Penguins: There’s been a baby boom among white-flippered penguins ever since a farming couple in New Zealand turned much of their land into a safe haven for the birds, Scientific American reports. The birds, also known as korora, have nearly doubled their population in the last decade, and credit is being given to the farmers Francis and Shireen Helps.

The Storm From Above: And while strong winds and heavy rains were jolting many people across the eastern United States out of their sleep Wednesday night, a satellite was snapping images of the lightning flashes from the storm. The cool photos were published on LiveScience.

Science With a Side of Fries: Finally, science is alive and well, perhaps at your local bar or restaurant, where Americans are more frequently gathering to hear or join in scientific talks. As Reuters reported on Wednesday: “Want a beer with that biology? Or perhaps a burger with the works to complement the theory of everything?”

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