Bizarre: Now an Angry Birds theme park

Angry Birds maker Rovio is teaming up with a major US retail chain to sell its merchandise, and plans to open themed activity parks in Britain, as it continues to expand beyond mobile games to establish a Disney-style brand, it said on Tuesday.

Peter Vesterbacka, marketing chief of the Finnish start-up behind the world's most downloaded game, told Reuters that Rovio saw itself as an entertainment brand, not just a games company.

"We want to make Angry Birds a permanent part of pop culture," Peter Vesterbacka said in an interview in London, comparing the brand to Sanrio's Hello Kitty or Nintendo's Mario. "We're just getting started."

Angry Birds, in which the player uses a slingshot to catapult birds to destroy green pigs hidden in fortresses, has been downloaded more than 700 million times, and is the fastest-growing game on Facebook.

Rovio raised its profile hugely last year by hitching a game to the hit animated movie Rio, made by News Corp's 20th Century Fox, even burying a clue to the game in the movie studio's Super Bowl ad.

The company's value has been estimated in recent media reports at up to $9 billion, little more than two years after it first released Angry Birds for the iPhone.

"It's as good a guess as any," said Vesterbacka, comparing Rovio to Facebook games maker Zynga , which went public in December and has a market value of $9.6 billion.

Now Rovio has signed up a top U.S. retailer to put its branded toys, books and T-shirts in dedicated areas of thousands of stores nationwide, timed to coincide with the launch of its new Angry Birds Space game this week.

The company also plans to open branded retail stores in China soon.

Rovio did not want to name the U.S. retailer ahead of the official announcement but said it would be bigger than an existing partnership with bookseller Barnes & Noble , where visitors to the stores can pick up game credits for free.

Rovio also said it planned to launch themed activity parks in Britain, which was its original breakthrough market for the Angry Birds game, as its first expansion outside Finland. Its next targets will be in Asia.

The parks, which will be built in partnership with Finnish playground equipment maker Lappset, will feature Angry Birds-inspired swings, sandpits, climbing towers, slides and outdoor arcade games.

More like adventure playgrounds than Disney's massive theme parks, they will mostly be in cities and towns or attached to existing large theme parks.

"We can't afford to invest billions into theme parks," said Vesterbacka. "We are a tiny company from a tiny country."

Rovio has about 300 staff, up from 50 a year ago, and has had to move out of central Helsinki to new, bigger headquarters next to mobile phone maker Nokia .

Vesterbacka reiterated that Rovio was in no hurry for a public listing. Its last funding round was last year, when it raised $42 million from venture capital firms Accel, Atomico and Felicis Ventures.

He said Rovio had not needed the money and had raised the capital primarily to attract onto its board investors such as Atomico's founder Niklas Zennstrom, a co-founder of Skype.

"This year we'll be very busy, like we were last year, with building up the infrastructure," said Vesterbacka. "We can fund our own growth."

A 'special treat' of fried mice

CHINA: A butcher who sells freshly caught mice says his meat his 'squeaky clean' (tongue in cheek).

Mice meat is considered a delicacy in China and it is more expensive compared to other meat like chicken. Those who can stomach the rat meat claim it is very sweet and tasty and they can be sampled in fried, roasted or boiled form. Cured mouse bacon made into tiny rashers by delicate carving is a special delicacy in China.

A Chinese man told Orange.co.uk that he has been eating mice for about a decade with no harm done to him as the mice are of the wild, free range variety that are caught in the countryside and are very healthy.

Pink-haired student invited back to school

US: A US school that barred a sixth grader after she dyed her hair pink with her parents' blessing to celebrate her good grades lifted its ban on Tuesday following an outcry from civil rights advocates.

After missing three days of classes, pink-haired Brianna Moore headed back to Shue-Medill Middle School in Newark, Delaware, on Tuesday after administrators reversed their decision after a call from the Delaware branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"We're on our way right now," said Kevin Moore as he drove his 12-year-old daughter to school.

At his daughter's request last week, he helped dye her hair a shade called crimson storm, which has a pink hue, as a reward for improving her grades.

But when she showed up for school the next day, she was sent home and told not to return until her hair met school policy mandating a "natural color, brown, blond, black, natural red/auburn."

The ACLU soon got in touch with attorneys for the school district and asked, "Don't you think this is unconstitutional?" said Kathleen MacRae, ACLU executive director in Delaware.

Moore was invited back to school with assurances she would not be punished, said Wendy Lapham, school district spokeswoman.

"The hair is not going to be an issue," Lapham said.

Job seekers asked for Facebook passwords

SEATTLE:  When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password.

Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn't see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.

Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn't want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no.

In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person's social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around.

"It's akin to requiring someone's house keys," said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor who calls it "an egregious privacy violation."

Questions have been raised about the legality of the practice, which is also the focus of proposed legislation in Illinois and Maryland that would forbid public agencies from asking for access to social networks.

Since the rise of social networking, it has become common for managers to review publically available Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts and other sites to learn more about job candidates. But many users, especially on Facebook, have their profiles set to private, making them available only to selected people or certain networks.

Companies that don't ask for passwords have taken other steps - such as asking applicants to friend human resource managers or to log in to a company computer during an interview. Once employed, some workers have been required to sign non-disparagement agreements that ban them from talking negatively about an employer on social media.

Asking for a candidate's password is more prevalent among public agencies, especially those seeking to fill law enforcement positions such as police officers or 911 dispatchers.

Back in 2010, Robert Collins was returning to his job as a security guard at the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services after taking a leave following his mother's death. During a reinstatement interview, he was asked for his login and password, purportedly so the agency could check for any gang affiliations. He was stunned by the request but complied.

"I needed my job to feed my family. I had to," he recalled, after the ACLU complained about the practice, the agency amended its policy, asking instead for job applicants to log in during interviews.

"To me, that's still invasive. I can appreciate the desire to learn more about the applicant, but it's still a violation of people's personal privacy," said Collins, whose case inspired Maryland's legislation.

Until last year, the city of Bozeman, Mont., had a long-standing policy of asking job applicants for passwords to their email addresses, social-networking websites and other online accounts.

And since 2006, the McLean County, Ill., sheriff's office has been one of several Illinois sheriff's departments that ask applicants to sign into social media sites to be screened.

Chief Deputy Rusty Thomas defended the practice, saying applicants have a right to refuse. But no one has ever done so. Thomas said that "speaks well of the people we have apply."

When asked what sort of material would jeopardize job prospects, Thomas said "it depends on the situation" but could include "inappropriate pictures or relationships with people who are underage, illegal behavior."

In Spotsylvania County, Va., the sheriff's department asks applicants to friend background investigators for jobs at the 911 dispatch center and for law enforcement positions.

"In the past, we've talked to friends and neighbors, but a lot of times we found that applicants interact more through social media sites than they do with real friends," said Capt. Mike Harvey. "Their virtual friends will know more about them than a person living 30 yards away from them."

Harvey said investigators look for any "derogatory" behavior that could damage the agency's reputation.

E. Chandlee Bryan, a career coach and co-author of the book "The Twitter Job Search Guide," said job seekers should always be aware of what's on their social media sites and assume someone is going to look at it.

Bryan said she is troubled by companies asking for logins, but she feels it's not violation if an employer asks to see a Facebook profile through a friend request. And she's not troubled by non-disparagement agreements.

"I think that when you work for a company, they are essentially supporting you in exchange for your work. I think if you're dissatisfied, you should go to them and not on a social media site," she said.

More companies are also using third-party applications to scour Facebook profiles, Bryan said. One app called BeKnown can sometimes access personal profiles, short of wall messages, if a job seeker allows it.

Sears is one of the companies using apps. An applicant has the option of logging into the Sears job site through Facebook by allowing a third-party application to draw information from the profile, such as friend lists.

Sears Holdings Inc. spokeswoman Kim Freely said using a Facebook profile to apply allows Sears to be updated on the applicant's work history.
The company assumes "that people keep their social profiles updated to the minute, which allows us to consider them for other jobs in the future or for ones that they may not realize are available currently," she said.

Giving out Facebook login information violates the social network's terms of service. But those terms have no real legal weight, and experts say the legality of asking for such information remains murky.

The Department of Justice regards it as a federal crime to enter a social networking site in violation of the terms of service, but during recent congressional testimony, the agency said such violations would not be prosecuted.

But Lori Andrews, law professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law specializing in Internet privacy, is concerned about the pressure placed on applicants, even if they voluntarily provide access to social sites.

"Volunteering is coercion if you need a job," Andrews said.

Neither Facebook nor Twitter responded to repeated requests for comment.

In New York, Bassett considered himself lucky that he was able to turn down the consulting gig at a lobbying firm.

"I think asking for account login credentials is regressive," he said. "If you need to put food on the table for your three kids, you can't afford to stand up for your belief."

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