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Twitter ready to start trading on NYSE after setting IPO price at $26 per share
• NEW YORK (AP) -- Twitter's public stock debut, set for Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange, has been carefully orchestrated to avoid the glitches and eventual letdown that surrounded Facebook's initial public offering 18 months ago.
• Twitter set a price of $26 per share for its initial public offering on Wednesday evening and will begin trading Thursday under the ticker symbol "TWTR" in the most highly anticipated IPO since its Silicon Valley rival's 2012 debut.
• The price values Twitter at more than $18 billion based on its outstanding stock, options and restricted stock expected to be available after the IPO. That's more than Macy's, which has a market capitalization of $17 billion, and Bed Bath & Beyond, which is valued at around $16 billion. Facebook Inc.'s value, meanwhile, stood at $104 billion at the time of its IPO.
• Twitter, named after the sound of a chirping bird, got its start 7 years ago, first with Jack Dorsey and then Evan Williams as CEO. Its current chief is Dick Costolo, a former Google executive who once aspired to be a stand-up comedian. On March 21, 2006, Dorsey posted the world's first tweet: "Just setting up my twttr." Noah Glass, who helped create Twitter posted the same words just 10 minutes later.
• Since then, the social network that lets users send short messages in 140-character bursts has attracted world leaders, religious icons and celebrities, along with CEOs, businesses and a slew of marketers and self-promoters.
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Soyuz carries Sochi Winter Olympic torch to Intl Space Station ahead of first torch spacewalk
• MOSCOW (AP) -- A Russian spacecraft carrying the Olympic torch and three astronauts has docked with the International Space Station.
• Video streamed by the U.S. space agency NASA reported a flawless docking Thursday about six hours after the craft blasted off from Russia's manned space facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
• The unlit torch for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi is to be taken on a spacewalk Saturday, then return to Earth on Monday (late Sunday EST) with three departing space station astronauts.
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