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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Prime Minister Mario Monti of Italy steps down

LONDON — Prime Minister Mario Monti, the technocrat who guided Italy through economic turbulence for 13 months after scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi left office, resigned Friday to make way for new elections.

Monti, a former economics professor and European Union commissioner, was appointed to the office, with a Cabinet of academics and economists and broad support to bring the country back from the brink of financial disaster.

"A year ago this government was launched, and today — not because of a Maya prophecy — we must bring it to an end," Monti quipped as he spoke to colleagues at an annual reception.

His resignation was provoked in part by Berlusconi's announcements this month that he was withdrawing his center-right Freedom Party's support for Monti's budget reforms and would return to the political arena, leading the party into elections.

Berlusconi's attempt to regain the prime minister's post comes despite his conviction in a corruption case and his ongoing trial on charges of paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl.

Monti's resignation followed Parliament's final approval of the last of his budgetary measures. He and his Cabinet will remain in power as caretakers until the elections, expected in mid-February.

The short run-up to the elections is fraught with questions. Monti, now a senator for life, could seek an active role in the coming government, though he has said that he has no such ambition.

He has not shown his hand yet but recently met with a new group of centrist and pro-European parties. However, such an alliance is expected to command no more than about 15% of an electorate fast losing faith in Monti's austerity cuts, seeing only Italy's rising unemployment and lack of growth.

He is expected to announce his decision Sunday.

The probable favorite in the upcoming election is a left-wing coalition under former communist politician Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the Democratic Party, who is not opposed to Monti's reforms but must answer to powerful labor unions. According to recent polls, Bersani's coalition could attract support from about 30% of the voters.

The dwindling but still strong center-right vote is largely divided between the maverick anti-austerity Five Star Alliance movement led by TV comedian Beppe Grillo and Berlusconi's Freedom Party.

In a meeting with ambassadors Friday morning, Monti said that he thought Italy's standing had improved both economically and internationally in the last year and that he saw "an increase in Italy's authority and credibility on the international scene."

Stobart is a news assistant in The Times' London bureau.

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Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.

The actor's divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.

Kutcher's filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.

Kutcher currently stars on CBS' "Two and a Half Men."

Messages sent to Kutcher's and Moore's publicists were not immediately returned Friday.

Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations' efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.

Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.

Kutcher has been dating former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis.

The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.

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The New Old Age Blog: The Ex-Wives Club

Weather permitting, Kappy Lundy and Barbara Thompson are heading out to Vancouver, Wash., on Saturday night to have a holiday dinner with the parents of their daughter’s husband.

Yes, these women both mothered the same children — now grown and with children of their own. Ms. Lundy is their biological parent; Ms. Thompson is the stepmother who married their father after he and Ms. Lundy divorced.

But that doesn’t really begin to describe their relationship. Over more than 40 years, these two have been friends and what they call “wife-in-laws,” in addition to moms-in-tandem. Now, they’re so close they feel like sisters, they say.

There’s yet another dimension to this relationship that makes it so unusual: Ms. Lundy, who is 71, has become a caregiver for Ms. Thompson, who’s 67 and was given a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment in 2009.

One wife caring for another, through thick and through thin – think about that. It’s another example of how the new old age is spawning unusual — and creative — alliances.

Ms. Lundy went with Ms. Thompson to eight months of classes on memory loss offered by the Alzheimer’s Association chapter in Portland, Ore., where the two women live. And now they go together to monthly meetings of the Wild Bunch, a group of people with dementia and their caregivers who’ve come together to provide each other emotional support. (More on that group to come in a future post.)

Ms. Lundy talks to Ms. Thompson every day and tries to get together with her once a week.

“We’re just really good friends, and we want to know what’s going on, what are you doing, like everybody else,” said Ms. Thompson, who moved into an independent living facility in Portland nearly a year ago, after Ms. Lundy helped pack up her previous apartment.

Ms. Lundy, who lives across town, about 20 minutes away, said: “We’ll go to happy hour together and have a little toddy and maybe a nice meal. And crack up – she makes me laugh.”

Both women grew up in Eugene, Ore., but became friends later, after they moved to Portland in their 20s. Their favorite haunt was the Goose Hollow Inn, a tavern where artists, architects and writers would congregate. Ms. Lundy and her husband began to socialize regularly with Ms. Thompson and her first husband.

“She’s full of life and fun – a gypsy at heart,” is how Ms. Thompson describes Ms. Lundy.

“She’s funny and smart and a really good listener,” is how Ms. Lundy describes Ms. Thompson.

When Ms. Lundy’s marriage to Phil Thompson — a handsome bear of a man, with a charismatic personality and an artistic sensibility — began falling apart, both members of the couple turned to their friend Barbara for support. “She listened to me and my anger, and she listened to him about how he was hurting,” says Ms. Lundy, who was separated from her husband for a year before the divorce was official.

There were no hard feelings when Phil’s feelings toward Barbara turned romantic, Ms. Lundy says. But she didn’t see the couple much during subsequent years of work and travel abroad. During those years, her children, Jessica and David, stayed with their father in Portland.

Eventually, Ms. Lundy came home and was invited to holidays at the Thompson house. She grew close to Barbara again and let go of negative feelings toward her former husband, she said. Over time, they became bound together as family.

“It’s incredible,” their daughter said. “They’re just really caring for each other and not threatened by each other.

“My dad got a big kick out of it and would always introduce them as ‘my wives.’”

When Phil Thompson died in August 2008, both women were at his bedside. And when Ms. Thompson started having memory problems months later, Ms. Lundy was one of the first to notice. “We could see she wasn’t remembering things, but she said, ‘This is my grief,’” Ms. Lundy recalled. It became clear something else might be going on as problems persisted and a doctor’s evaluation yielded the mild cognitive impairment diagnosis.

Ms. Thompson described her reaction to that information: “It was scary. Very scary. I didn’t know if it meant the end of my freedom, of my ability to just live my own life.”

For her part, Ms. Lundy said: “The hardest thing for me from the very beginning was to see my party pal and my dear, dear friend changing. It was very frustrating to me. And very hurtful. I wanted to support her. But sometimes I didn’t have the patience. Because, you know, she wasn’t acting like Barbara. It’s taken a while, but slowly, slowly, slowly and surely, I’ve accepted that this is who Barbara is.”

Ms. Lundy isn’t the only caregiver for Ms. Thompson: Jessica and David, her stepchildren, and two close friends also help out, as needed.

For Ms. Lundy, the uncertainty associated with her friend’s mild cognitive impairment diagnosis is hard to live with. Will it progress to dementia? Will it stay stable, or even get better? The doctor can’t say, and “all that not-knowing business is unsettling,” she said.

Becoming a caregiver has “made our friendship even stronger, I think,” Ms. Lundy says. “We’re closer now. Even though we’ve been friends for years and years, I never felt responsible for her before.”

For Ms. Thompson, what’s hardest is living alone after nearly 30 years of being married to Phil and worrying about losing her independence — notably, her ability to continue driving.

“I feel isolated with the disease,” she said. “And being alone in a new apartment with lots of strangers here has been a little difficult.”

“I’m very grateful to Kappy,” Ms. Thompson said. “I didn’t used to feel that she would be this way. She was always doing her own thing. But she has definitely reached out, beyond what most people would do.”

On Christmas the two women will be at Jessica’s house, arriving at around noon, after the grandchildren have opened their presents, and staying through the late afternoon. After the holidays, Ms. Lundy says she plans to take Ms. Thompson out more often and “have a couple of beers and a laugh and be happy and just be Barbie and Kappy,” two old friends, enjoying each other’s company.

This is the one of the most unusual caregiving relationships I know of. It reaffirms what I’ve been told several times: You never know who will end up being there for you when you need help. Sometimes the people we expect will care for us don’t, and others step forward. Has that been your experience?

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Stocks sink after Republicans cancel budget vote

Stocks are closing sharply lower after House Republicans called off a vote on tax rates.

That left federal budget talks in disarray 10 days before sweeping tax increases and government spending cuts are set to take effect.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 120 points to close at 13,191 Friday. It had been down as much as 189.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 13 points to 1,430. The Nasdaq composite index fell 29 to 3,021.

The House bill would have raised taxes on Americans making at least $1 million per year and locked in decade-old tax cuts for Americans making less.

Two stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was 4.7 billion shares, higher than the recent average.

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Boehner rejects Democrats' push for immediate vote on gun bill

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John A. Boehner rejected calls from Democrats to schedule a vote on new gun restrictions before the end of the year, saying he wants to wait for recommendations from a newly formed White House task force before committing to a legislative response to the mass shooting at a Connecticut school.

“When the vice president's recommendations come forward, we'll certainly take them into consideration,’’ Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday in his first public comments on calls for new gun legislation since the slaying of 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “But at this point I think our hearts and souls ought to be to think about those victims in this horrible tragedy.”

President Obama on Wednesday said he had asked Vice President Joe Biden to lead a task force to come up with initiatives to stem gun violence by the end of next month. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and fellow Democrats have pressed for an immediate vote on a long-stalled bill that would ban ammunition magazines containing more than 10 rounds.

Obama has outlined a slightly slower pace for action, urging Congress to hold a vote “in a timely manner” in the new year.

Both Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill say they are trying to seize on what appears to be a burst of momentum behind gun legislation in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., tragedy. Similar efforts initiated after other high-profile shootings faltered after national attention veered elsewhere.

Biden held the first meeting of the task force Thursday, gathering several cabinet members and White House officials with a group of local law enforcement leaders. In remarks before the meeting, the vice president noted his work on the 1994 crime bill, which banned the sale of some assault weapons, and said he would again be working closely with police groups to craft proposals.

“What I think the public has learned about you is you have a much more holistic view of how to deal with violence on our streets and in our country that you’re ever given credit for,” Biden told the law enforcement officials. “I want to hear your views because, for anything to get done, we’re going to need your advocacy.”

richard.simon@latimes.com

Twitter: @richardsimon11

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Twitter: @khennessey

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Video game shares down in wake of shooting

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shares of video game makers and sellers fell Thursday in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, which has renewed debate about violent games and their potential influence on crime.

Shares of GameStop Corp., whose stores sell video games as well as systems like the Xbox and Wii, fell 5 percent in afternoon trading.

Investors are seen as being increasingly concerned that the government may impose tougher rules on the sales of games rated for “mature” and older audiences.

Investors may be worried that parents will also avoid buying first-person shooter games like “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2″ after the tragedy Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary, in which 20 children and six adults were shot and killed by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.

“Maybe there will be more stringent efforts to make sure youth are not playing games that they’re not old enough to play,” said Mike Hickey, an analyst with National Alliance Securities. “Maybe there will be a greater effort by parents in managing the content their kids are playing.”

Shares of companies involved in the video game industry, many of which had been dropping since the shooting, declined further Thursday.

— GameStop stock lost $ 1.37, or 5 percent, to $ 26.18. Shares have barely changed since last Thursday’s close, the day before the shooting, to Wednesday’s close.

— Shares of Activision Blizzard Inc., the publisher of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2,” fell 9 cents to $ 10.70. The stock had already dropped 5.6 percent.

— Electronic Arts Inc. shares fell 41 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $ 13.99. Shares had dropped 5.6 percent.

— Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. shares slipped 29 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $ 11.69. The stock had dropped 8 percent.

The declines came as broader markets rose. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.3 percent at 13,295.

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Twitter post offers clue to The Civil Wars' future

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — While there still remain questions about the future of The Civil Wars, there's new music on the way.

Joy Williams, one half of the Grammy Award-winning duo with John Paul White, said Thursday during a Twitter chat that she was in the studio listening to new Civil Wars songs.

It's a tantalizing clue to the future of the group, which appeared in doubt when a European tour unraveled last month due to "irreconcilable differences."

At the time, the duo said it hoped to release an album in 2013. It's not clear if Williams was referring Thursday to music for a new album or for a documentary score they have composed with T Bone Burnett. They're also set to release an "Unplugged" session on iTunes on Jan. 15.

Nate Yetton, the group's manager and Williams' husband, had no comment — though he has supplied a few hints of his own by posting pictures of recording sessions on his Instagram account recently. The duo announced last summer it would be working with Charlie Peacock, who produced its gold-selling debut "Barton Hollow." The photos do not show Williams or White, but one includes violin player Odessa Rose.

Rose says in an Instagram post: "Playing on the new Civil Wars record... Beautiful sounds."

Even with its future in doubt, the duo continues to gather accolades. Williams and White are up for a Golden Globe on Jan. 13, and two Grammy Awards on Feb. 10, for their "The Hunger Games" soundtrack collaboration "Safe & Sound" with Taylor Swift.

Williams' comments came during an installment of an artist interview series with Alison Sudol of A Fine Frenzy sponsored by The Recording Academy.

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Online:

http://thecivilwars.com

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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German Health Care Attracts Foreign Patients

BERLIN — When Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, needed advanced medical care for a stroke suffered this week, he flew not to the United States or Britain but to Germany, for treatment here in the capital.

For many Americans, Germany is known as a way station where soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan received immediate medical care on United States military bases. But it is also a popular destination for wealthy and prominent patients from the Middle East, Russia and beyond, experts say.

Before the Arab Spring uprisings, the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak traveled to Munich in 2004 for back treatment and to Heidelberg in 2010 to have his gallbladder removed. Last year, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan reportedly had a surgical procedure on his prostate at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.

According to German government statistics, the number of hospital patients from the United Arab Emirates rose to 1,754 from 339 between 2000 and 2010, the most recent year available. From Saudi Arabia, the figure climbed to 712 from 143. The numbers from Iraq were smaller but still rose to 176 from 95. Over the same period, the number of Russians jumped to 4,873 from 842.

“We have one of the worldwide best health care systems and people from abroad know that,” said Isabella Beyer, research associate in medical tourism at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. Mr. Talabani, 79, is among them; he was treated in Germany before for back trouble.

Mr. Talabani is now being cared for at Berlin’s Charité hospital, which is more than 300 years old and is one of Europe’s largest university hospitals. The storied institution was home to several Nobel Prize winners, including Robert Koch and Paul Ehrlich. A spokeswoman for Charité, Manuela Zingl, confirmed that Mr. Talabani was being treated there but said that she could not disclose any information on his condition because of rules on medical privacy.

Mr. Talabani was said to be in “stable” condition after suffering a stroke this week, though there were unconfirmed reports that he was in a coma. He was rushed to the Baghdad Medical City on Monday.

He was treated there by medical experts from Iran, Germany and Britain, according to Iraqi staff members. Barazan Sheik Othman, the head of the presidential media office, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Talabani left for Germany accompanied by doctors after they established that he was well enough to be transferred.

Hospitals and clinics here have increasingly sought to market themselves as a destination for international patients. Ms. Beyer said that Germany benefited from a combination of lower prices than the United States but still provided high-quality care. Shorter waiting times and the proximity to the Middle East also helped.

“Before, a lot flew to Geneva,” said Salah Atamna, 44, whose business, Europe Health, seeks to link up patients from abroad with German hospitals and clinics.

Many wealthy Arabs would fly to Germany in the summer to escape the blistering heat at home, Mr. Atamna said, scheduling their vacation to coincide with an operation or other treatment. They often traveled with family members and large entourages. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it became harder to acquire visas to the United States, and medical travelers began searching for alternatives.

Duraid Adnan contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Victor Homola from Berlin.

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Stocks gain as traders hope for a budget deal

Stocks closed higher as traders hope that lawmakers and the White House can agree on a budget deal in time to avoid steep tax hikes and cuts in government spending at the beginning of the year.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 60 points to end at 13,312 Thursday. The Dow waffled between small gains and losses early in the day and moved higher in the afternoon.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose eight points to 1,444. The Nasdaq composite rose six to 3,050.

The Republican-controlled House passed a plan to avert the “fiscal cliff,” but President Barack Obama has threatened to veto it.

Rising stocks outnumbered falling ones two-to-one on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was lighter than usual at 3.6 billion shares.

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