The justices' 7-2 ruling closes the door on states independently changing the requirements for those using the voter-registration form produced under the federal "motor voter" registration law. They would need permission from a federally created panel, the Election Assistance Commission, or a federal court ruling overturning the commission's decision, to make tougher requirements stick.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the court's majority opinion, said federal law "precludes Arizona from requiring a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself."

Voting rights advocates welcomed the ruling.

"Today's decision sends a strong message that states cannot block their citizens from registering to vote by superimposing burdensome paperwork requirements on top of federal law," said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "The Supreme Court has affirmed that all U.S. citizens have the right to register to vote using the national postcard, regardless of the state in which they live."

Under Proposition 200 approved in 2004, Arizona officials required an Arizona driver's license issued after 1996, a U.S. birth certificate, a passport or other similar document before the state would approve the federal registration application. It can no longer do that on its own authority.

Less than 5 percent of people registering to vote in Arizona use the federal form, said Matt Roberts, a spokesman for Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett. The rest register through the state, meaning they will continue to be asked to provide proof of citizenship when signing up to vote.

But because of the court ruling, people can merely choose the less onerous federal form, which asks people to swear if they are citizens or not, but does not demand proof.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, expects the state will ask the Election Assistance Commission to approve the citizenship proof on the federal form and to fight any denial in court the process laid out in Monday's ruling. "We have to jump through more hoops," Horne said.

Federal officials deadlocked on Arizona's request in 2005, and the state did not appeal.

In other actions Monday, the court:

Ruled that agreements between the makers of name-brand and generic drugs to delay the generics' availability can be illegal and challenged in court.

Ruled that prosecutors in some instances may use a suspect's silence at an early stage of a criminal investigation against him or her, before the suspect has been arrested or informed of constitutional rights.

Agreed to decide in its next term a new dispute involving race; specifically, whether federal housing law requires proof of intentional discrimination.

The Arizona case is the first of two major voting decisions to be made by the court this month. Justices have yet to say whether a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law that has helped millions of minorities exercise their right to vote, especially in areas of the Deep South, was still needed, despite several justices voicing deep skepticism during arguments in February.

Arizona has tangled frequently with the federal government over immigration issues involving the Mexican border, health care and more. But the decision on voter registration has broader implications because other states have similar requirements, such as Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee, and still others are contemplating such legislation.

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp called the decision disappointing but said he would continue working with state officials to "provide a safe, secure and legal system for voter registration."

Tom Caso, a professor at Chapman University School of Law in California and supporter of the Arizona law, said the decision "opened the door" to noncitizen voting.

"The court's decision ignores the clear dictates of the Constitution in favor of bureaucratic red tape," Caso said. "The notion that the court will not enforce the Constitution unless you first apply to a commission that cannot act because it has no members is mind-boggling."

Currently, the Election Assistance Commission has no active commissioners. The four commissioners are supposed to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The last two left in 2011, according to the panel's website.

Kathy McKee, who led the push to get Proposition 200 on the ballot in Arizona, said the ruling makes it harder to combat voter fraud, including fraud carried out by people who don't have permission to be in the country. "To even suggest that the honor system works, really?" McKee said. "You have to prove who you are just to use your charge card now."

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were the only two dissenters. Alito said the decision means that Arizona now has two voter registration systems, and that the success of an applicant could come simply by the system he or she chooses. "I find it very hard to believe that this is what Congress had in mind," he said.

Opponents of Arizona's law saw it as an attack on vulnerable voter groups such as minorities, immigrants and the elderly. They say they've counted more than 31,000 potentially legal voters in Arizona who easily could have registered before Proposition 200 but were blocked by the state law in the 20 months after it passed. They say about 20 percent of those thwarted were Latino.

Arizona officials say they should be able to pass laws to stop noncitizens from getting on their voting rolls. The Arizona voting law was part of a package that also denied some government benefits to people in the country illegally and required Arizonans to show identification before voting.

Arizona can ask the federal government to include the extra documents as a state-specific requirement, Scalia said, and challenge any adverse decision by the government in court. Louisiana's request already has been granted, Scalia said.

The ruling upholds one by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the 1993 National Voter Registration Act of 1993 trumps Arizona's Proposition 200.

The case is 12-71, Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc.

___

Associated Press writer Jacques Billeaud contributed to this story from Phoenix.

___

Follow Jesse J. Holland on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jessejholland

As the term draws to a close at the end of June, the nine justices still have not released decisions in two highly anticipated gay marriage casesPerry v. Hollingsworth and Windsor v. United Statesas well as two key cases involving race, Shelby County v. Holder and Fisher v. University of Texas.

At 9:15 a.m., the experts at SCOTUS stands for Supreme Court of the United Stateswill begin analyzing what the Court might do in the liveblog below, and when a decision is handed down, this liveblog will likely be the first place to break the news.

In the Perry case, the court is expected decide whether California voters discriminated against gay people when they voted to ban same-sex marriage. In Windsor, the court is weighing whether the federal Defense of Marriage Actwhich limits all federal marriage benefits to opposite sex couples--violates the constitutional rights of same-sex couples.

In Shelby, the justices could significantly scale back the federal government's right to supervise states with a history of voting discrimination against minorities, and in Fisher, the court will decide whether universities can use race as a factor in undergraduate admissions.

The Court will begin issuing opinions at 10 a.m. ET.

(Reuters) - Starboard Value LP revealed a major stake in Smithfield Foods Inc on Monday and urged the world's largest pork producer to explore a breakup rather than go ahead with a planned $4.7 billion takeover by Chinese meat company Shuanghui International.

The activist investor, now Smithfield'sbiggest shareholder with a 5.7 percent stake, said Smithfield might be worth "well in excess" of the $34 per share offered by Shuanghuiif it split into hog production, pork and international units and shopped the businesses separately.

Smithfield shares rose 0.9 percent to $33.09, well below the sum-of-the-parts valuation of $44 to $55 per share that Starboard laid out in a letter to Smithfield's board, dated June 17.

The ho-hum market reaction on Monday could be a sign that investors think a breakup is unlikely.

"Continental Grain has made this case for several years and has not gotten anywhere with it," said Moody's analyst Brian Weddington, referring to the agricultural company that had pushed for a split-up. Continental sold its Smithfield shares after the Shuanghui deal was announced.

Continental was not immediately available to comment.

The planned purchase by Shuanghui would be the largest by a Chinese company of a U.S. firm to date. (http://link.reuters.com/heq88t)

The deal has some U.S. lawmakers worried about food safety implications for consumers. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, has said that federal agencies considering the merger "must take China's and Shuanghui's troubling track record on food safety into account."

The companies insist the transaction was focused on exporting U.S. pork to China, not importing meat from China.

LOTS OF INTEREST

Starboard said it believes there are numerous interested parties for each of the company's divisions and that it "is looking to identify and engage in discussions with any third parties who may be interested in acquiring any of Smithfield's operating units."

It did not identify any possible bidders.

Thailand's Charoen Pokphand Foods Pcl , controlled by billionaire Dhanin Chearavanont, considered bidding for Smithfield, it said last month. Other companies in the meat business mentioned by industry observers as possible suitors for parts of Smithfield include Hillshire Brands Co , Tyson Foods Incand Brazil's JBS SA . None of the companies has said they were interested.

Run by Jeffrey Smith, New York-based Starboard has run campaigns in recent months at Office Depot Inc , DSP Group Incand Tessera Technologies Inc .

It was influential in Office Depot selling its Mexican business, has received support from other shareholders on its director slate at DSP Group, and succeeded in replacing the board at Tessera. It was less successful at AOL, where it lost a proxy fight last year.

Its stake in Smithfield catapults it past Vanguard Group Inc, which owned 4.7 percent as of March 31, according to Thomson Reuters data.

A spokesman for Shuanghui declined to comment on the Starboard letter. Smithfield was not immediately available. (Reporting by Sakthi Prasad and Siddarth Cavale in Bangalore and Martinne Geller in New York; Editing by Edwina Gibbs, Lisa Von Ahn and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Next Monday evening, June 17, the moon will be nine days old and just to the right of Spica. On Tuesday evening, it will have moved to a position between the two, as shown in the graphic above. By Wednesday night (June 19) it will be off to Saturn's left, 11 days old.

To skywatchers without a telescope, watching the moon move past Spica and Saturn over three successive nights will bring a vivid demonstration of how rapidly our moon circles the Earth. []

If you own a telescope, there is much to be revealed. On the moon, the rising sun illuminates the craters Plato (in the north), Copernicus (in the center), and Tycho and Clavius (in the south). Clavius is one of the largest craters on the surface of the moon, and it's always a challenge to observers to see how many "craterlets" (mini craters) they can count within its walls.

Moving your telescope onto , you are always guaranteed a treat with its tiny perfect rings. But if you look on Tuesday night, look beyond the rings to Saturn's moons, several of which are readily visible in small telescopes.

Saturn's brightest moon Titan, the only moon in the solar system large enough to have a substantial atmosphere, can be seen in any telescope. On Tuesday night it will be at its maximum elongation eastward from the planet. Between Titan and the rings, look for , visible in a small 90-mm telescope. South of Saturn is Rhea, its second brightest moon. Dione is immediately north of Saturn.

The special treat tonight is located a bit farther north of Saturn beyond Dione: the planet's most unusual moon, . As you can see in the graphic, the inner moons all move in orbits in the same plane as the rings, right above Saturn's equator.

Iapetus, however, moves in a completely different orbit, tilted strongly with respect to Saturn's equator. This often takes Iapetus far from Saturn, but tonight it is passing just north of Saturn, and is much closer and easier to spot than usual. Iapetus is a bit fainter than the other moons, so may require a 150-mm telescope.

Stargazers can also look beyond the moon and Saturn for other telescopic treats in Virgo, such as the close double star Porrima (Gamma Virginis) to Spica's right. But viewing the countless galaxies in Virgo will have to wait a week until the moon gets out of this part of the sky.

This article was provided to SPACE.com by , the leader in space science curriculum solutions. Follow Starry Night on Twitter .

TOKYO (Reuters) - Banks have failed, the yen has fallen and Japan's economy has collapsed, leading to political turmoil. Its great ally, the United States, abandons it. Then comes the final straw: an attack by North Korean guerrillas posing as Korean tourists.

"From the Fatherland, With Love", by veteran Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami, chronicles the political fumbling that is the Japanese government's response and the eventual counterattack by a motley group of homeless, psychotic misfits using largely homemade weapons.

The book is written at least partly from the point of view of the North Koreans, echoing this year's Pulitzer prize-winning novel: "The Orphan Master's Son," by Adam Johnson.

Murakami, 61, who has played in rock bands and dabbled in filmmaking, is often referred to as the "enfant terrible" of Japanese literature for the dark, satiric lens he turns on Japanese society. He spoke with Reuters about his book.

Q: You've said before that all your books start from a "seed," what was the seed for this one?

A: After the end of the bubble economy, Japan - economically, politically and socially - has had a sense of being stalled. Many seriously unsettled misfits have emerged and there are crimes as a result. There hasn't been anything big like terrorism yet, but I wondered about a group of dangerous young people getting together and doing something. On top of that, I'd had (in mind) a vague story about the North Korean High Command invading a Japanese city, Fukuoka. I started feeling that I'd like to write about those misfits facing off with the North Koreans.

Q: And from there?

A: I'd thought as far as North Korea attacking, but if the real North Korean army came, it would just turn into an ordinary war. There was a Hollywood movie just at that time with Michael Caine, and they were trying to kidnap Churchill. German soldiers dressed in English uniforms and pretending to be English military, and that became a hint for me. If you have a group of soldiers who are basically set up as rebels, that allows the government to disown them - and that intrigued me. It wouldn't become a war. If it became a war, it would just turn into a war novel. I also thought the Japanese government would end up in a very tight spot this way.

Q: North Korea, as it has shown up in novels like "The Orphan Master's Son", is really still an unknown country. How did you manage to come up with the North Korean characters?

A: I read a lot of books. A lot of books. There's also North Korean movies that most people can't see - but there's one store in Tokyo that sells those movies. I must have seen 10 movies or so. As a result, I got a pretty good idea of peoples' lives. Scenes of Pyongyang and the countryside show up in the news, and of course I also spoke with refugees from North Korea in the South. They'd always been asked about their escapes, apparently - how and why - but instead I asked about their lives, where they lived, please draw a map of the towns, diagram your houses, and so on. They all thought I was a spy.

Q: Does the fact that the misfits fight back instead of the government to repel these invaders symbolize something?

A: In principle, governments and companies are supposed to guide their organization in a certain direction and have an image of what that direction is. The basic reason Japan's government is dysfunctional is that they don't really seem to understand which direction they should move in.

In most novels, if it was just entertainment, somebody like James Bond emerges and fights everybody. I didn't want to write that kind of book, I wanted the irony of these homeless and really rather strange misfits ending up doing the fighting.

Q: Was envisioning North Korea the hardest part?

A: The North Korean High Command are the ones that tell all the stories, that made things very difficult ... They tell all the stories as if they're the only main characters. But of course there are plenty of things all people have in common - taking care of their parents, falling in love. We all have basic things in common - that we're sad if our mother dies, it hurts if you break a bone, your own son and daughter are unbelievably dear to you. So I wrote based on that, and on the movies that showed a special North Korean way of thought.

Q: Can anybody outside of North Korea understand it? Perhaps the only way is through literature.

A: Nobody really knows the truth there...The thing I think of most vividly is something that happened when the commandos, pretending to be Korean tourists, checked into the hotel. One of them touches some tissues sitting there. It's the softest thing he's ever touched in his life. There's nothing like that in North Korea. First of all they were surprised that Japan had the skills to make something like this, but then they also realized that they would never lose to people who were so soft as to use fluffy paper like this. The tissue paper is a very simple symbol that shows the distance and difference between the two countries. And when I wrote that, it was a hint to me of how to enter the minds of the commandos. I figured that would allow me to really figure out how they thought.

Q: By using this kind of device in literature, you can actually approach close to the truth.

A: Yes. It's all a question of imagination.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies, editing by Paul Casciato)

The 108-page report from an expert panel is expected to detail many failures in the medical care given Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian dentist living in the western city of Galway. She died from blood poisoning in October one week after being hospitalized while suffering a miscarriage.

Doctors refused to abort her fetus until its heart beat stopped. During those days of delay, a coroner's inquest has already determined that Halappanavar developed lethal blood poisoning.

The expert report, led by London obstetrics professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, is expected to detail several points when Galway doctors and nurses should have detected the rising septicemia in her blood.

Halappanavar's death reignited demands for Ireland to draft a law spelling out when abortions can be performed to save the life of the woman, an issue that six governments had left in legal limbo stretching back to a 1992 Supreme Court judgment. That judgment said abortion should be legal in Ireland when doctors deem one necessary to save the life of a woman, including from her own threats to kill herself.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny published a bill Wednesday that would finally transform the 1992 judgment into legislation hours after declaring in parliament that he "happens to be a Catholic" but could not govern as a Catholic prime minister.

Kenny's statement, during which he detailed receiving a barrage of threats and letters written in blood from anti-abortion activists, is being seen as a watershed moment in church-state relations in predominantly Catholic Ireland. Analysts noted how all previous Irish premiers have avoided conflict with church leaders and emphasized their own Catholic devotion.

The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill would permit abortions for women threatening suicide only if three doctors, including two psychiatrists, ruled that the woman's threat was severe. Abortions for non-emergency cases involving a threat to life would require support from two doctors.

Many lawmakers and doctors say this provision means Irish women will still sidestep the Irish hurdles and keep traveling to neighboring England for abortions, where the practice was legalized in 1967. More than 4,000 Irish women receive abortions there annually.

"Unfortunately I don't think the provisions on suicide will encourage any woman to go through that system in Ireland," said lawmaker Thomas Pringle.

A poll published Thursday in The Irish Times indicated overwhelming public support, with strong majorities wishing the bill extended abortion rights further.

The Irish Times opinion poll found that 89 percent want abortions to be granted in cases where a woman's life is endangered from medical complications caused by pregnancy.

Some 83 percent also wanted abortion legalized in cases where the fetus could not survive at birth, 81 percent for cases of pregnancy caused by rape or incest, and 78 percent where a woman's health not simply her life was undermined by pregnancy. The government bill excludes those three scenarios.

The poll of 1,000 people earlier this week across this country of 4.6 million had an error margin of 3 percentage points.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook IncChief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faced a barrage of questions on Tuesday about the company's slumping stock price during the No. 1 social networking company's first shareholder meeting since its rocky initial public offering last May. Zuckerberg, who has presided over a 37 percent decline in the stock since its debut at $38, said he believed Facebook was on the right path toward long-term success, even though he was disappointed with its performance on Wall Street.

TSX dives as stimulus worries hit resource shares

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell sharply on Tuesday in a broad selloff led by materials and energy shares following signs that global central banks are moving away from monetary stimulus. The biggest drag on the market was integrated energy company Suncor Energy Inc , which fell 2.3 percent to C$31.07. Other big energy losses included TransCanada Corp's , 1.5 percent fall to C$46.12.

CIBC names Nesbitt COO, observers see him in line for CEO

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian Imperial Bank of Commercesaid on Tuesday it had named Richard Nesbitt chief operating officer, raising speculation he will be the eventual successor to CEO Gerry McCaughey at Canada's fifth-largest bank. Nesbitt, who has been running CIBC's wholesale banking unit since 2008 and took on added responsibility for the bank's international operations in 2011, will add the COO job to his current duties, the bank said.

Lululemon must look for cultural fit in CEO search

TORONTO (Reuters) - Premium workout wear maker Lululemon Athletica Incwill not have an easy job replacing Chief Executive Christine Day, the company's public face who built up the brand to be an international powerhouse over the past half decade. Day, who announced her surprise departure plans after markets closed on Monday, was also behind Lulu's blistering growth rate and its transition from yummy mummy niche to broader, multi-sport appeal.

Analysis: Is U.S. stock trading safer? Fewer erroneous trades seen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The water may be safer than many investors thought. More than three years after the "flash crash" terrified many by temporarily wiping out almost $1 trillion of U.S. stock market value in a few minutes, there are signs that the number of erroneous and aberrant trades is dropping.

Volkswagen recalls almost 26,000 cars in Australia

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Automobile maker Volkswagen AGwill recall almost 26,000 cars in Australia in response to potential gearbox problems, the company said on Wednesday, mirroring recalls already ordered in China, Singapore and Japan. Volkswagen Australia would recall Golf, Jetta, Polo, Passat and Caddy models manufactured between June 2008 and September 2011, the German company said in a statement.

Affiliates of electric car maker Coda file for bankruptcy

(Reuters) - Two affiliates of failed U.S. electric-car maker Coda Automotive filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday, according to court documents, in another sign of the challenges facing the "green" car industry. Lio Energy Systems Holdings, based in Delaware, and Hong Kong-based Miles Electric Vehicles Ltd are seeking to have their cases jointly administered with those of parent Coda Holdings and its affiliates, including Coda Automotive, which filed for bankruptcy on May 1.

Regulator gives big banks two years to push out swaps trading

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials will give JPMorgan Chase , Citigroup , Bank of Americaand several other big firms two years to comply with a controversial Dodd-Frank requirement that they push some swaps trading out of the bank. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said on Tuesday it had sent letters to seven banks granting them transition periods. The agency had said it expected to give banks extra time to comply with the push-out requirement.

Severn Trent bidder walks away after third snub

LONDON (Reuters) - The Canadian-led consortium wooing Severn Trentwalked away empty handed on Tuesday after the British water company refused to engage in talks before a bid deadline expired. The LongRiver consortium, which had three approaches spurned by Severn Trent, said it would not table a new offer unless talks with the utility's board were forthcoming.

Royalty pursuing hostile bid for Elan, fights Irish panel ruling

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Royalty Pharma , pursuing a hostile $8 billion takeover of Irish drugmaker Elan Corp Plc , moved on Tuesday to make sure it is not blocked by a potential $200 million share buyback and drug spinoff at the target company. Elan, which has been resisting the advances of the U.S. investment firm for more than three months, rejected a sweetened takeover offer on Monday and said for the first time that it was assessing inquiries from other parties.

But new research finds the financial world doesn't just respond to the Internet; the Internet can also predict what the stock market will do. The research isn't the first to find such online clairvoyance. For example, Google may even be able tobefore doctors can, thanks to people's tendencies to self-diagnose using the search engine. Google searches can also forecast the .

The new study, however, takes the extra step of testing out how well stock-buying would go, using Google search trends as guidance. The result: a pretty nice return.

Googling the markets

University of Warwick Business School researcher Tobias Preis and colleagues had previously found a correlation between the number of Google searches for a company's name and the number of times that company's stock was bought and sold. However, that method couldn't predict a stock's price. []

Now, Preis and his colleagues have turned to broader search trends to try to predict the whole stock market's movements. Using publicly available data on search terms from Google Trends, the researchers tracked 98 terms, many of them finance- or economics-related, such as "debt," "crisis" and "derivatives" from 2004 to 2011. They then compared the searches to the closing prices of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a major stock-market index.

To test whether the terms searched in the week prior to any given closing day could predict the Dow Jones, the researchers invented a pretend investing game. If searches for financial terms went down, they opted to buy stocks and take a "long" position, holding on to the stocks and waiting for their value to go up.

If searches for financial terms went up, the researchers instead chose to "short" the market a strategy that allows buyers to sell stocks they don't own, with the understanding that they will buy the stocks later at a lower price in essence, gambling that thein value.

Worried searchers

The reasoning behind the game was simple. If people get anxious about the stock market, they will likely seek out information on financial issues before trying to dump their stock. Thus, finance-related Google searches should go up before a stock market decline.

That's exactly what the researchers found: An uptick inon finance terms reliably predicted a fall in stock prices.

"Debt" was the most reliable term for predicting market ups and downs, the researchers found. By going long when "debt" searches dropped and shorting the market when "debt" searches rose, the researchers were able to increase their hypothetical portfolio by 326 percent. (In comparison, a constant buy-and-hold strategy yielded just a 16 percent return.)

"Trends to sell on the financial market at lower prices may be preceded by ," the researchers write today (April 25) in the journal Scientific Reports. "During such periods of concern, people may tend to gather more information about the state of the market. It is conceivable that such behavior may have historically been reflected by increased Google Trends search volumes for terms of higher financial relevance."

Nevertheless, the average day-trader might find the strategy tough to implement, Preis said.

"This is something I wouldn't recommend to do without testing this very carefully," Preis told LiveScience. For one thing, markets have a tendency to adapt. If everyone starts using Google search terms to try to game the system, the strategy will become less effective.

For another, the financial terms used by the researchers may no longer be the best predictors of how buyers and sellers are feeling.

"You would need to find a way to identify, on the fly and in real time, what are the emerging topics that are relevant to markets?" Preis said.

The findings are scientifically "truly exciting," Preis said, because they have implications far beyond the stock market. Online chatter could help predict disease spread, civil unrest and political elections, he said. And Google is only the beginning, he added. Wikipedia, for example, provides open-source information on how many people view specific articles hour-by-hour, making the online encyclopedia another potential predictor of stock markets and other real-life behavior.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on and . Follow us , & . Original article on LiveScience.com.

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On Monday, online gaming empire Zynga — maker of the puzzlingly popular FarmVille series — announced that it was slashing its workforce by 18 percent. That means 520 people are losing their jobs.

The layoffs are being cast as a necessary cost-cutting measure by the company, and will shrink Zynga's staff to pre-IPO numbers while saving about $70 million to $80 million per year, . As part of the downsizing initiative, Zynga's New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles offices are all shuttering.

Zynga — whose roster of games also includes Zynga Poker and Words With Friends — has struggled to prove that selling digital currency to millions of gamers accustomed to playing for free is a viable business. At the time of its initial public offering in late 2011, the company wasfrom both Wall Street and the media, earning Zynga an overall value of $9 billion.

Now a year-and-a-half later, the gaming titan is a shadow of its former self with a valuation of . Its stock plummeted another 12 percent after news of the staff cuts broke Monday before stabilizing... at least somewhat.

"None of us ever expected to face a day like today, especially when so much of our culture has been about growth," Zynga CEO Mark Pincus . "But I think we all know this is necessary to move forward."

The cuts caught most of the employees based outside of Zynga's San Francisco offices by "by complete surprise," . Just a few weeks ago, "it wasn't immediately obvious that Zynga's New York office was about to be terminated. At that time, Zynga New York was pitching new ideas for games and business was operating as usual."

Among the New York layoffs is the entirety of OMGPOP, the studio behind the hit iOS and Android game Draw Something. Zynga acquired the small studio .

— Ali Nicolas (@ali_nicolas)

Think of this as a "right-sizing" of Zynga, , "to reflect a more somber reality that these mobile businesses are not as large as its web-based one that rode the startup to glory on the explosive growth of social networks, primarily Facebook."

Zynga is reportedly "winnowing down its games pipeline to focus on churning out a lower number of high-quality games," . One of those high-quality titles, at least , taps the star power of Food Revolution host Jamie Oliver, who will "infuse his passion for sustainable, unprocessed, and fresh cuisine" into a game called . Inside, players "learn the importance of sustainability by growing fresh ingredients in recycled garden containers that they build from scratch using discarded materials like an old boot and broken pot."

Zynga isfor $3 a share.

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