Naomi Gleit helps keep Facebook growing

The gig: As senior director of Facebook Inc.'s growth, engagement and mobile team, Naomi Gleit helps grow the social network's 1-billion-plus user base.

Facebook employee No. 29: Few people outside Facebook have heard of Gleit, but she's the second-longest-serving Facebook employee, after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Gleit, 29, talked her way into a job at Facebook on July 18, 2005 — her birthday. She was Facebook's 29th employee, coming on board shortly after the company hit 1 million users and before anyone had an inkling of the colossus it would become.

Dogged spirit: Unlike most other early employees who eventually dispersed to seek new fortunes, Gleit says she has no intention of leaving Facebook. She gets that tenacity from her "tiger mom," a computer programmer who ferried her to ballet, piano, karate and Chinese lessons, and her Jewish father, an immigration lawyer who took her to Hebrew school, she said. "I know it sounds completely irrational, but I had no doubt in 2005 that Facebook would be something incredible in the future," she said.

Rival social networks: Her passion for Facebook began before she was hired, when she was a Stanford undergraduate studying science, technology and society, an interdisciplinary major. She wrote her senior thesis on why Facebook beat out rival college social networking site Club Nexus at Stanford. (Club Nexus was started by Stanford student and Turkish software engineer Orkut Büyükkökten, who went on to create Orkut, Google's first attempt at a social network.) Getting in on the ground floor at Facebook made her feel like she was taking part in something bigger than herself, the same feeling she got volunteering for six months in a refugee camp in Botswana, she said.

Growing with Facebook: Gleit helped Facebook push beyond colleges to high schools and eventually to everyone. In late 2007, when the torrid growth pace temporarily cooled, Zuckerberg tapped a team of five to reignite it and asked Gleit to lead product management. It fell to the growth team to identify the obstacles to the company's momentum. In a company ruled by engineers, Gleit, who never studied programming, earned respect with her analytical approach and intuitive understanding of people. "I always believed that growth was the most important thing, the most important way to impact the company," she said. There are now more than 150 people on the team. "It's been an incredible learning experience," she said. "Each year is different."

That magic moment: Those who work closely with Gleit say part of her success early on was her ability to seize on the "magic moment" that makes users fall in love with Facebook. She made it simpler to sign up, and she helped people find friends as soon as they joined. She also helped Facebook spread quickly to new countries by enlisting users to translate the service into more than 80 languages. Gleit helps her team parachute into new markets and traverse less-familiar languages and cultures. It's something that comes from her own passion to see the world and have new experiences. She has taught on a Navajo reservation and lived in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.

One billion users: Around noon Sept. 14, Zuckerberg gathered with Gleit and dozens of employees in front of a big screen as the number of Facebook users crossed 1 billion. "The scale was insane," she said. "But that is not the goal. When Mark talks about his vision for Facebook, he talks about being able to connect everyone in the world to the people that they care about and provide some value for them every single day."

A problem solver: Zuckerberg calls on Gleit for high-profile projects. In May 2010, when Facebook was under siege because of how it was handling users' personal information, he put Gleit in charge of simplifying privacy settings. Last year she worked on a popular feature that lets users subscribe to a News Feed without having to become Facebook friends.

Betting on mobile: Now Gleit is focused on the future: mobile devices and how they can unlock emerging markets. Gleit knew back in 2011 that people would begin to log on to Facebook from mobile devices in greater numbers than from desktops, particularly in the developing world. So she traveled to Tel Aviv to buy Snaptu, which makes software that helps people on low-tech phones access Facebook, and she brought the whole team back to Silicon Valley with her. Now Facebook is surging in popularity on mobile devices in Tokyo and Nairobi, Kenya. "I have always been interested in technology and how it can be used to improve lives," Gleit said.

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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Boehner's 'fiscal cliff' plan fails

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John A. Boehner abruptly canceled a vote on his Plan B tax proposal late Thursday after failing to find enough GOP support, a stunning political defeat that effectively turned resolution of the year-end budget crisis over to President Obama and the Democrats.

The speaker had spent the last few weeks negotiating one-on-one with the president, establishing himself as the second-most powerful figure in Washington. But with his strategy imploding, Boehner conceded that he would play a lesser role.

"Now it is up to the president," he said, to work with a fellow Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, "to avert the fiscal cliff."

The proposal the speaker had hoped to bring to a vote would have prevented a year-end tax increase for all but those earning more than $1 million a year.

But the Ohio Republican said in a statement, "It did not have sufficient support from our members to pass."

The unexpected turn of events caused an immediate reaction on Wall Street, where after-hours investors began to yank money out of U.S. stocks. Futures that track the Standard & Poor's 500 fell 1.5%, and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 1.6%.

Now, Obama faces a crucial test of his leadership, with little time left to craft a deal.

Obama's most recent offer is likely to be the starting point. He made a substantial concession: raising taxes only on household income above $400,000, rather than the $250,000 threshold he campaigned on for reelection.

As he pursues votes in Congress, the president will need to face down Democrats, particularly the liberal wing that may feel emboldened to demand that a deal be tilted toward their views — perhaps with additional spending on infrastructure or unemployment benefits.

Any compromise will need substantial Democratic support. Although the president needs the speaker to allow legislation to come to a vote in the GOP-controlled House, Boehner emerges in a weakened position and has little leverage to demand further concessions. His Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), will need to decide whether to become a final line of defense against Obama or step aside for a Democratic-led plan.

"The president's main priority is to ensure that taxes don't go up on 98% of Americans and 97% of small businesses in just a few short days," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said after Boehner canceled the vote. "The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly."

Without a compromise, most Americans will see their taxes automatically rise and spending cuts ripple across the economy in the new year. The White House and the speaker had been closing in on a broad deficit-reduction deal to steer around the coming "fiscal cliff," but Boehner suddenly changed course this week to gauge the sentiment of House Republicans.

The support expressed by top Republicans for new taxes has cracked the party's anti-tax orthodoxy and opened the door to a compromise that would have been unthinkable before the November election.

Mindful that his own job as speaker comes up for a vote in two weeks, Boehner must make a difficult choice: whether to allow a plan to come to the House floor without support from his majority, or play a key role in sending the nation over the fiscal cliff and raising taxes on most Americans.

As the speaker and his lieutenants trolled for votes earlier Thursday, buttonholing lawmakers in scenes like those in the movie "Lincoln," Carney dismissed Boehner's Plan B as a "multi-day exercise in futility."

"Instead of taking the opportunity that was presented to them to continue to negotiate what could be a very helpful large deal for the American people, the Republicans in the House have decided to run down an alley that has no exit," he said.

Late in the evening, as the time for voting neared, the House took an unscheduled recess — a sign that the tally had come up short. With Democrats almost unanimously against the bill, Boehner could afford to lose only two dozen Republican defectors.

The speaker and his top lieutenants then convened a late-night meeting of rank-and-file lawmakers and announced they were pulling the bill.

"We don't have the votes," the speaker said, according to a lawmaker in the room.

Conservatives split over Plan B, complicating Boehner's quest. He received a major assist when anti-tax stalwart Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform declared that the bill was a vote for lower taxes and did not violate the pledge most Republicans had signed not to raise taxes. But other leading conservative groups opposed it, including FreedomWorks, which is extremely influential with tea party supporters.

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Nintendo’s amazing triumph in Japan may doom the company

According to Japanese gaming bible Famitsu, Nintendo 3DS sold 333,000 units in the week ending December 16. Sony’s PS Vita limped along at 13’000 units. The new Wii U did an OK 130,000 units and PS3 managed 46,000 units.  The utter hardware domination of the 3DS is reshaping the Japanese software market. Franchises that were thought to be fading have been revitalized in their portable versions. The 3DS version of the ancient “Animal Crossing” series, famed for being the game where nothing happens, hit a staggering 1.7 million units last week in Japan. “Inazuma Eleven” sold 170,000 units in its launch week, up from 140’000 units its DS version managed in 2011.

[More from BGR: RIM, HTC and Nokia could all be headed the way of Palm]

Nintendo’s portable console 3DS had a muted start in its home market in the spring of 2011. Many thought that Sony would have a fair shot at competing with Nintendo once Playstation Vita launched at the end of 2011. But once Nintendo executed an aggressive price cut for 3DS in the summer of 2011 and then launched a large-screen version of the console in mid-2012, the gadget has grown into a godzilla in Japan, demolishing both Sony Vita and aging tabletop console competition.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]]

3DS is doing well also in America, where its lifetime sales are moving close to the 6 million unit mark this holiday season. According to NPD, the 3DS sales in the US market topped 500,000 units in November. That’s a decent number, though far from the torrid volume the portable is racking up in its home market. The US November video game software chart was dominated by massive home console juggernauts: new installments of Call of Duty, Halo and Assassin’s Creed franchises  shifted more than 13 million units in retail. At the same time, the Japanese software chart remains in a Nineties time warp,  dominated by Nintendo’s musty masterpieces: Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc.

Japanese and American tastes have always been different. But what we are witnessing now is a particularly fascinating divergence. American consumers are spending more of their time and money on smartphone and tablet games, while console game spending is increasingly focusing on massive, graphically stunning blockbuster titles on Xbox360 and PS3. The casual gamers are shifting to mobile games, while hardcore gamers remain attracted to sprawling epics on home consoles. The overall video game spending in America keeps declining month after month, as casual titles and mid-list games slide. But the Triple A whales like Call of Duty series are doing better than ever.

In Japan, Nintendo has been able to battle back iPhone and Android game invasion with a nostalgic series of portable games that basically recycle the biggest hits of Eighties and early Nineties. Mario, Pokemons and other portable heroes are slowly losing their grip on US and European consumers. But in Japan, some form of national nostalgia is keeping Nintendo on track.

The problem here is that the Japanese success of the 3DS may now be convincing Nintendo that it does not have to rethink its business strategy. The smartphone and tablet game spending continues growing explosively across the world. Unlike console games, mobile game sales in China are legal. The global gaming spending is shifting towards new hardware platforms even as console mammoths like Halo still reign in America. At this critical juncture, Nintendo has managed to cocoon its home market in a web of nostalgia, turning the 3DS console and its Eighties left-over franchises into epic bestsellers yet again.

This means that there is no sense of urgency to push Nintendo into rethinking its long-term plans. The company may continue simply ignoring the smartphone and tablet challenge, designing new portable consoles and the 28th Mario game to support it. 20 years ago, Japan’s insularity doomed its chances to succeed in the mobile phone business. Ithe idiosyncratic nature of Japan may now be leading its biggest entertainment industry success astray.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Marilyn Monroe subway grate photo on view in NYC

NEW YORK (AP) — A famous image of Marilyn Monroe with her skirt billowing atop a New York City subway grate is on display in a picture-perfect spot: outside the Times Square subway station.

The supersized version of Sam Shaw's well-known picture is part of an exhibit. The exhibit also features eight of Shaw's other Monroe pictures, on view inside the 42nd Street-Bryant Park station on the B, D, F, M and 7 lines.

The show opened Thursday. It'll be up for a year.

Shaw shot the subway grate photo for the 1955 film "The Seven Year Itch." He took the other pictures in 1957.

The exhibit is part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Arts for Transit program. Manager Lester Burg says matching a mass transit setting with a popular figure from mass culture seemed a good fit.

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Recipes for Health: Marinated Olives

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Marinated olives.

These are inspired by Patricia Wells’ “Chanteduc Rainbow Olive Collection” in her wonderful book “The Provence Cookbook.” It is best to use olives that have not been pitted.

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

5 bay leaves

2 large garlic cloves, peeled, green shoots removed, thinly sliced

Strips of rind from 1 lemon (preferably organic)

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, coarsely chopped

1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds

2 cups imported olives (black, green or a mix) (about 3/4 pound)

 

1. Combine the olive oil, vinegar, bay leaves and garlic in a small saucepan and heat just until warm over low heat. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon rind, thyme, rosemary and fennel seeds.

2. Place the olives in a wide mouthed jar and pour in the olive oil mixture. Shake the jar to coat the olives. Refrigerate for two hours or for up to two weeks. Shake the jar a few times a day to redistribute the seasonings.

Yield: 2 cups, serving 12

Advance preparation: These will keep for about two weeks in the refrigerator.

Nutritional information per ounce (does not include marinade): 43 calories; 4 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 3 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 1 gram carbohydrates; 0 grams dietary fiber; 468 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 0 grams protein

 

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

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Hedge fund manager alleges Herbalife is 'pyramid scheme'

Herbalife Ltd. is girding for a fight against a Wall Street money man who's betting $1 billion that the company is nothing more than what he called a "pyramid scheme."

The Los Angeles maker of nutritional products rushed to defend itself Thursday against a hedge fund manager's accusation.

Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman accused Herbalife of paying its sales staff far more money to recruit new distributors than to actually sell its products.

That results in the roughly 2.6 million distributors at the bottom of the sales pyramid making little or no income, while a handful at the top hauls in millions, he said.

"This is the best-managed pyramid scheme in the history of the world," Ackman said.

The company denied the allegation and accused Ackman of trying to manipulate the stock. Herbalife shares slumped 10% on Thursday and are off 21% in the two days since Ackman announced that the company is in his sights.

"Today's presentation was a malicious attack on our business model based largely on outdated, distorted and inaccurate information," Herbalife said in a statement. "We are not an illegal pyramid scheme."

Herbalife, which bills itself as a so-called multilevel marketer, has beaten back similar accusations in the past. But the company has rarely faced a nemesis such as Ackman.

The 46-year-old billionaire has fashioned a career on high-stakes gambits in controversial companies. His fund firm, Pershing Square Capital Management, manages $12 billion.

Showdowns between companies and skeptical investors historically play out behind closed doors, especially in the normally sleepy pre-holiday period.

But in a measure of the aggressive tactics favored by an emerging breed of activist investors, Ackman launched a public blitzkrieg Thursday. He gave a flashy multimedia presentation to a packed conference room in New York that was streamed live on the Internet.

"I've never seen anything quite like it," said Timothy Ramey, an analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co. "I've never seen an investor spend 31/2 hours of time at a major venue being webcast and then make TV appearances to make his point. It's the largest orchestrated bull or bear case that I've ever seen."

The brawl has potential repercussions for both sides.

Ackman claimed to have spent one year doing intensive research on Herbalife's operations, an unusually extended period given Wall Street's thirst for immediate results.

Earlier this year, Ackman began betting that Herbalife's stock would fall sharply.

His fund is "shorting" more than 20 million shares of the company. In a short sale, an investor borrows stock and sells it immediately, hoping to later buy the shares at a reduced price and return them to their actual owner.

Ackman promised to donate all profit from his Herbalife bet to charity, and portrayed his public diatribe as intended for the public good.

"I'm very fortunate to have the means to pursue this," he said. "I am independently wealthy. When I believe in something, I can say what I want and do what is right."

For Herbalife, the fight threatens to damage its credibility among investors who have always been sensitive to claims that its business is illegitimate.

Herbalife, which was founded in 1980, sells a line of diet powders, bars, drinks and vitamins through a network of independent distributors in more than 80 countries. The company reported sales of $3.5 billion in 2011.

Its chief executive, Michael O. Johnson, was the highest paid executive in the United States last year, hauling in more than $89 million in salary, exercised stock options and other compensation, according to GMI Ratings, a corporate governance firm.

The company has fought criticism of its business model throughout its existence.

In 2008, for example, self-proclaimed fraud buster Barry Minkow shorted Herbalife's stock and then accused the company of a host of misdeeds. The company survived those accusations and Minkow ultimately went to prison on unrelated charges.

This was the second time this year that investors punished Herbalife because of questions about its business practices. Herbalife shares fell 20% in May after hedge fund operator David Einhorn asked pointed questions during an earnings call.

"We operate at the highest ethical and quality standards, and our management and our board are constantly reviewing our business practices and products," Herbalife said. "We also hire independent, outside experts to ensure our operations are in full compliance with laws and regulations."

Ackman and Herbalife engaged in a bitter and bizarre war of words, with Johnson saying the United States will "be better when Bill Ackman is gone."

Ackman interpreted the statement as a threat and said he has hired a security firm to protect him.

stuart.pfeifer@latimes.com

walter.hamilton@latimes.com

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Fearful 'end of world' calls, emails flood NASA as Dec. 21 nears

If there's one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it's NASA.

The space agency said it has been flooded with calls and emails from people asking about the purported end of the world — which, as the doomsday myth goes, is apparently set to take place Friday, Dec. 21.

The myth might have originated with the Maya calendar, but in the age of the Internet and social media, it proliferated online, raising questions and concerns among hundreds of people around the world who have turned to NASA for answers.

Dwayne Brown, an agency spokesman, said NASA typically receives about 90 calls or emails per week containing questions from people. In recent weeks, he said, that number has skyrocketed — from 200 to 300 people are contacting NASA per day to ask about the end of the world.

"Who's the first agency you would call?" he said. "You're going to call NASA."

The questions range from myth (Will a rogue planet crash into Earth? Is the sun going to explode? Will there be three days of darkness?) to the macabre (Brown said some people have "embraced it so much" they want to hurt themselves). So, he said, NASA decided to do "everything in our power" to set the facts straight.

That effort included interviews with scientists posted online and a Web page that Brown said has drawn more than 4.6 million views.

It also involved a video titled "Why the World Didn't End Yesterday." Though the title of the video implies a Dec. 22 release date, Brown said NASA posted the four-minute clip last week to help spread its message.

The website addresses several scenarios — the possibility of planetary alignments, total blackouts, polar shifts and "a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction" — but comes to the same conclusion.

In short, NASA says, "the world will not end in 2012."

"Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012," the website says.

The Griffith Observatory will also be trying to debunk doomsday predictions. It announced plans to stay open late Friday evening — until one minute past midnight — to "demonstrate that claims regarding the Maya calendar, planetary alignments, rogue planets, galactic beams, and other related phenomena have no basis in fact."

A few years ago, NASA suspected that it might have to create such a campaign when the idea of the world ending began "festering," Brown said. The apocalyptic action movie "2012," released in 2009, didn't help, he said.

"We kind of look ahead — we're a look-ahead agency — and we said, 'You know what? People are going to probably want to come to us' " for answers, Brown explained. "We're doing all that we can do to let the world know that as far as NASA and science goes, Dec. 21 will be another day."

As for Saturday, when the questions — not the world — end: "I wish it was tomorrow."

kate.mather@latimes.com

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Google to sell part of Motorola for $2.35 billion

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is selling Motorola Mobility‘s TV set-top business for $ 2.35 billion, lightening the load that the Internet search leader took on earlier this year when it completed the biggest acquisition in its history.

The cash-and-stock deal announced late Wednesday will turn over Motorola‘s set-top division to Arris Group Inc., a relatively small provider of high-speed Internet equipment that is looking to become a bigger player in the delivery of video. Investors applauded the move, driving up Arris‘ stock by nearly 17 percent.

Google‘s decision to jettison the set-top boxes comes seven months after the Mountain View, Calif., company took control of Motorola Mobility Holdings in a $ 12.4 billion purchase.

The set-top boxes were never a big allure for Google, although the company is interested in finding ways to pipe its service on to TVs so it can sell more advertising.

Google prized Motorola for its portfolio of more than 17,000 mobile patents. Those form an arsenal that it can use in a fierce battle that has broken out over intellectual property as smartphones and tablet computers have emerged as hot commodities in recent years.

Motorola also makes smartphones and tablets, a manufacturing business that Google will retain, despite lingering concerns on Wall Street about the hardware shrinking Google‘s profit margins and possibly alienating other device makers that use the company’s Android software.

Besides not being a natural fit for Google, Motorola‘s set-top box also has become a potentially expensive liability. Digital video recorder pioneer TiVo Inc. is seeking billions of dollars in damages in a lawsuit alleging that Motorola‘s boxes infringed on its patents. Those claims are scheduled to go to trial next year in federal court in Texas.

Although they declined to provide specifics, Arris Group executives told analysts in a Wednesday conference call that Google still must cover most of the bill for any damages or settlement that TiVo might win.

TiVo already has negotiated about $ 1 billion in combined settlements in other patent-infringement cases it has brought against other companies, including Dish Network Corp., AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications.

The proposed sale of Motorola‘s set-top division calls for Google to receive $ 2.05 billion in cash and $ 300 million worth of Arris stock. If the deal wins regulatory approval, Arris Group expects to take over the division before the end of June.

Google will also pare its expenses, something likely to please investors concerned about Motorola being a drag on the company’s earnings. Arris said about 7,000 people work in Motorola‘s set-top division. Google ended September with about 53,500 employees, including 17,400 who worked on the Motorola side of its operations. More than 20,000 people worked at Motorola Mobility when Google became the owner in late May, but the payroll was slashed as part of an effort to pare the losses that have been piling up within Motorola as its once popular cellphones lost market share to Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics.

But Motorola‘s set-top business had been making money, according to Google, though the company didn’t say how much.

In the past year ending in September, Motorola‘s set-top operations generated $ 3.4 billion in revenue. That makes it twice as big as Arris Group, whose revenue totaled $ 1.3 billion during the same period. Arris Group, which is based Suwanee, Ga., had earned $ 39 million through the nine months of last year after suffering a loss of nearly $ 13 million for all of 2011.

“This represents a great leap forward for Arris,” CEO Bob Stanzione said during Wednesday’s conference call.

Arris’ stock surged $ 2.46 to $ 17 in extended trading Wednesday while Google‘s stock dipped $ 2.61 to $ 717.50.

The other half of the old Motorola Inc., Motorola Solutions Inc., remains an independent company. Based in Schaumburg, Ill., it sells communications equipment to government and corporate customers.

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Miss USA Olivia Culpo is crowned Miss Universe

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A 20-year-old Boston University sophomore and a self-described "cellist-nerd" brought the Miss Universe crown back to the United States for the first time in more than a decade when she won the televised contest Wednesday.

Olivia Culpo beat out 88 other beauty queens from six continents at the Planet Hollywood casino on the Las Vegas Strip to take the title from outgoing champion Leila Lopes of Angola.

Culpo wore a tight navy blue mini-dress with a sequined bodice as she walked on stage for the competition's opening number. Later in the night, she strutted in a purple and blue bikini, and donned a wintery red velvet gown with a plunging neckline.

Culpo's coronation ends a long losing spell for the U.S. in the competition co-owned by Donald Trump and NBC. An American had not won the Miss Universe title since Brook Lee won in 1997.

No one seemed more surprised than Culpo's family, who "looked at her like she had three heads" when told them she was entering the Miss Rhode Island contest last year, her father Peter recalled.

"We didn't know a thing about pageants," he said.

She won that contest in a rented $20 dress with a hole in it and then began working out, dieting, and studying current events on flashcards to compete for the Miss USA crown.

Culpo was good enough during preliminary Miss Universe contests to be chosen as one of 16 semifinalists who moved on to compete in the main show. Her bid lasted through swimsuit, evening wear, and interview competitions that saw cuts after each round.

She won over the judges even after tripping slightly during the evening gown competition. Telecasters pointed it out but also noted her poised recovery.

Moments before she won, Culpo was asked whether she had she had ever done something she regretted.

"I'd like to start off by saying that every experience no matter what it is, good or bad, you'll learn from it. That's just life," she said. "But something I've done I've regretted is probably picking on my siblings growing up, because you appreciate them so much more as you grow older."

One of those siblings, 17-year-old Gus, was cheering from the front row with his sister's glittering Miss Rhode Island sash wrapped around his shoulders

Miss Philippines, Janine Tugonon, came in second, while Miss Venezuela, Irene Sofia Esser Quintero, placed third. All the contestants spent the past two weeks in Sin City, where they posed in hardhats at a hotel groundbreaking, took a painting lesson, and pranked hotel guests by hiding in their rooms.

After the show, Culpo appeared wearing a white gold crown atop her long brown hair and told a group of reporters she hoped to bring the country some good news in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Connecticut.

"It's such an honor to be representing the USA in an international beauty contest in spite of all the tragedy that's happened in this country lately," she said. "I really hope that this this will raise everybody's spirits a little."

The daughter of two professional musicians, Culpo grew up in Cranston and spent her summers at band camp. She has played the cello alongside world-renowned classical musician Yo-Yo Ma, and followed in her parents' footsteps with performances at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Her father called her the "nerdiest" of her siblings, and her brother recalled that she was "really chubby and sort of weird when she was younger."

They speculated that the same single-mindedness that helped her master the cello in second grade propelled her rapid rise through the beauty pageant ranks.

With her promotion, Miss Maryland Nana Meriwether becomes the new Miss USA.

The Miss Universe pageant was back in Las Vegas this year after being held in Sao Paulo in 2011. It aired live on NBC and was streamed to more than 100 countries.

The panel of 10 judges included singer Cee Lo Green, "Iron Chef" star Masaharu Morimoto and Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants.

Asked on the red carpet whether he found playing in the World Series or judging the beauty pageant to be more difficult, Sandoval said both were hard.

As Miss Universe, Culpo will receive an undisclosed salary, a wardrobe fit for a queen, a limitless supply of beauty products, and a luxury apartment in New York City.

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Recipes for Health: Spiced Roasted Almonds

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Spiced roasted almonds.

Roasted nuts are standard snacks, and almonds are a healthy food. But it is easy to eat too many. I find that if they are a little spicy or hot, delicious as they are, they are not quite as addictive.

 

3 cups (about 400 grams) almonds

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt to taste

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste

1 to 2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 to 1 teaspoon crumbled dried thyme (optional)

 

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Toss the almonds with olive oil, salt and cayenne, and place on a baking sheet. Roast in the hot oven until they begin to crackle and smell toasty, 15 to 20 minutes. Be careful when you open the oven door because the capsicum in the cayenne is quite volatile, so avoid breathing in, and be careful of your eyes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. Toss with the thyme.

Yield: 3 cups (about 20 handfuls)

Advance preparation: Keep these in an air tight container in the freezer and they will be good for a couple of weeks.

Nutritional information per 20 grams (about 18 almonds): 119 calories; 10 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 7 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 4 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams dietary fiber; 0 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 4 grams protein

 

​Up Next: Marinated Olives

 

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

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