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Twitter has been privately raising millions in a new financing round, putting the value of the company at $7 billion dollars, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

Twitter declined to comment on the report when contacted by CNBC.com. "We don't comment on our finances or speculation about our finances," said a Twitter spokesperson.

Seven months ago, with the help of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Twitter raised $200 Million, which valued the company at $3.7 billion.

This year Twitter is expected to make $150 million in ad revenue, according to the Journal.

Although the company is growing, no signs point to Twitter going public, the Journal reported. For now, the company is building up an executive team and working on its advertising plans, which started in 2010.

NASA's last space shuttle ( Atlantis )countdown is under way, but bad weather may delay Friday's launch attempt.

There's a 60 percent chance that rain or thunderstorms will postpone the liftoff of Atlantis, shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters said Tuesday. The weather improves with each passing day, as the launch time gets slightly earlier.

Friday's launch time is 11:26 a.m. (1526 GMT).

The countdown clocks started ticking Tuesday afternoon. The four astronauts assigned to the 12-day flight arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Monday.

Atlantis is making one final supply run to the International Space Station before retiring. As many as 1 million spectators are expected to jam the Cape Canaveral area for the historic send-off.

NASA test director Jeremy Graeber said the launch team is doing its best to put off any emotions associated with the end of the 30-year shuttle era, until Atlantis flies.

"The team gets into the mode of this-is-launch-countdown, and that's really the focus that everybody has," Graeber told journalists. "The rest of the emotion that really comes with the end of the space shuttle program, I think will really kind of roll in as launch is completed."

Graeber, for one, can't wait to take his seat in Launch Control. "It's a really cool job ... and to get to do it one more time is a great feeling," he said.

Atlantis is loaded with thousands of pounds of food, clothes, experiments and other supplies for the orbiting complex. NASA wants to stockpile a year's worth of provisions in case commercially sponsored cargo ships get delayed. The first such launch is targeted for later this year.

NASA is under orders to get out of the Earth-to-orbit business and focus instead on trips to true outer space: an asteroid and Mars.

This will be the 135th flight for the shuttle program and the 33rd for Atlantis, the last shuttle to be retired. Discovery was first in March, followed by Endeavour at the beginning of June. Each shuttle will head to a museum.

NASA said it must launch Atlantis by Sunday — choosing the best two out of three days — otherwise it will have to wait until at least July 16. That's because of an unmanned rocket due to lift off next week.

If the crowds are as huge as anticipated, NASA said it will try Friday and then probably wait until Sunday to give launch controllers enough time to deal with the heavy traffic and get some rest.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A treasure trove found in the vaults of a temple in Southern India is estimated to be worth around $17 billion.

Local media said that the search team's finds included a four-feet-tall gold statue studded with emeralds, 15-feet-long gold necklaces and jewel-encrusted crowns. The estimated value of the hoard is 750 billion rupees ($17 billion), but officials said they were yet to assess the findings.

"Most of the articles found in the temple are offerings made by devotees and wealth the erstwhile rulers of the Travancore princely state had stored in the temple," the temple official said on conditions of anonymity.

The treasure was found in the 16th century Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in southern Kerala state, the royal chapel of the former rulers of Travancore, now part of Kerala.

Hundreds of armed police were deployed around the temple and metal detectors were set up at the entrance after the first reports of the treasure came out on Saturday.

The value put to the treasure is more than what the federal government spends on education annually.

Intellectuals and religious leaders debated on how to use the wealth. A mob attacked the house of an activist who demanded it be used to public purposes.

Several temples in India have billions of dollars worth of wealth as rich devotees and royalty donate gold and other precious objects, and run schools, colleges and hospitals.

The Tirumala temple in eastern Andhra Pradesh state is reported to have 3,000 kg of gold, a third of which it deposited with the State Bank of India last year.

The royal family still controls the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple, unlike other temples in Kerala which are managed by the government. The government appoints priests and scrutinises budgets.

The vaults were searched after a local lawyer petitioned a court to order the government to take over the temple as it did not have adequate security to protect its wealth. India's top court had then set up a committee to open the long-sealed vaults and take stock of the treasure.

Temple Affairs Minister V.S. Sivakumar said the government would ask the Supreme Court on how to maintain the treasure.

Fees paid to A-list actors in Bollywood have doubled in the last three years, with stars commanding up to $5.5 million per film.

According to boxofficeindia.com - a website that tracks movie ticket sales and is closely followed by the film fraternity - out of the 175-odd movies released in 2010 by the Mumbai-based Hindi film industry or Bollywood, only 10 films made money with the rest declared ‘disasters’ or ‘flops'.

Another industry estimate puts Bollywood’s strike rate or percentage of profitability at 5 percent.

The FICCI-KPMG Media and Entertainment Industry Report of 2011, says the Indian film industry’s revenue shrunk from $2.3 billion in 2008 to $1.85 billion in 2010. The worst hit was the home video segment that fell nearly 50 percent on the back of high costs of DVD rights, piracy and lowered retail prices.

Even revenue from the overseas market, with its huge Indian Diaspora, has fallen 9 per cent over the last three years to $150 million, according to the FICCI-KPMG report.

If it were not for alternate sources of revenue like one-time buying of cable & satellite rights by TV channels and music sales, the contraction in the industry would have been even more dramatic, say Bollywood sources.

One of the main reasons why the 100-year old Indian film industry is in this financial mess is because of soaring production costs driven in a huge part by exorbitant fees paid to its stars. Fees paid to A-list actors in Bollywood have doubled in the last three years, with stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Aishwarya Rai commanding $3.5-5.5 million per film. Talent fee, which includes the money paid to actors, directors and screen writers, makes up roughly 40-50 percent of a film’s cost, according to production house executives.

A case in point is the much-hyped movie of 2010 starring Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan and Mexican actress Barbara Mori. It was made for $13 million, but its worldwide earnings were just $2.9 million, according to industry estimates.

Another factor pushing up costs is the entry of corporate houses. While these professionally managed production companies have brought some discipline to an industry, which is still largely run by a network of independent producers, financiers and distributors, they have also contributed to increasing costs.

“In their eagerness to establish themselves as serious players, executives announced big budgets and big fees for stars hiking up the production costs of films,” says Sabrina Dhawan, a screenwriter who works in India and the United States. As a result, the breakeven threshold for Indian films has moved up dramatically.

While companies like UTV Motion Pictures, Reliance Big Entertainment, Mukta Arts, YRF Studios, and Dreamz Unlimited are trying to bring in a commercial imperative to the creative process of filmmaking, their contribution has acted as a double-edged sword. These companies have brought in sophisticated production technologies, hi-tech special effects and increased marketing and promotional activities, but all at a huge cost, which is eating into a film’s bottom line.

Marketing and promotional activities now make 30-35 percent of a film’s cost, but getting the audience to notice you is becoming more and more difficult. “The space once occupied almost singularly by films is now being infringed by TV soaps, cricket and retail brands causing film producers to spend much more to get the mindshare of the audience,” says Rahul Puri, Executive Director, Mukta Arts, a publicly-listed film production house.

Besides increased production costs, the hit rate is also being affected by poor creativity as quantity replaces quality.

"A case in point is the much-hyped movie of 2010 starring Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan and Mexican actress Barbara Mori. It was made for $13 million, but its worldwide earnings were just $2.9 million, according to industry estimates.”

“In India hardly any time or resources are spent on pre-production research of consumer tastes or on scientific study of what will work vis-à-vis Hollywood where 20-25 percent of the film budget is allocated to pre-production activity,” say Siddharth Roy Kapoor, CEO of UTV Motion Pictures, another listed production studio.

Rajesh Jain, Executive Director, Media and Entertainment at KPMG says, “Bollywood needs fresh ideas, storylines and original content for the films to make money.”

According to Arnold Peter, a Los-Angles based film industry lawyer, "Indian films tend to be formulaic and that is why no pure Indian film has crossed over to a global audience."

Besides improving creative input, Bollywood also needs to expand its business model to include more alternative sources of revenue. It needs to, for example, allow 3G and You Tube downloads, says Kapoor.

“The Indian film business is robust but because it has captured virtually the entire theatrical market, it is a relatively flat business… It needs to look at additional revenue streams such as secondary markets and film merchandising,” says Peter.

Another perennial problem is piracy, which swallows as much as 30 percent of film revenues.

Industry players are of the opinion that one way of fighting the combined onslaught of piracy, star fees and marketing costs is to consolidate. KPMG's Jain points out that even though there are 1,200 films made every year you can count the number of large, corporate production houses on your fingers, leaving plenty of room for further mergers and acquistions. "It speaks volumes about [the industry's] structure,” says Jain.

© 2011 CNBC.com