LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - James Gunn, the man entrusted with steering Marvel's 'Guardians of the Galaxy' to the big screen, apologized publicly for a 2011 blog post that was criticized as sexist and homophobic.
Gunn, who is best known for directing the 2006 horror-comedy 'Slither,' found himself under fire this week after reports about a blog post titled 'The 50 Superheroes You Most Want to Have Sex With.' In it, he called the superhero Gambit a 'Cajun fruit' and suggested that Iron Man could 'turn' the lesbian Batwoman into a straight woman. He went on to joke that Batgirl, a masked avenger who happens to be a teen mother, was 'easy.' The list was voted on by Twitter and Facebook users, but has since been removed from his site.
In a statement to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Gunn said his attempt at irreverence was misguided and stressed that he is a proponent of gay rights and women's rights.
'A couple of years ago I wrote a blog that was meant to be satirical and funny,' Gunn said. 'In rereading it over the past day I don't think it's funny. The attempted humor in the blog does not represent my actual feelings. However, I can see where statements were poorly worded and offensive to many. I'm sorry and regret making them at all.'
The post is an unwanted distraction from his efforts to give Marvel and its corporate owner the Walt Disney Company another hit. He plans to co-write the script for 'Guardians of the Galaxy' in addition to directing. The film will be released in 2014.
'It kills me that some other outsider like myself, despite his or her gender or sexuality, might feel hurt or attacked by something I said,' he added in his apology. 'We're all in the same camp, and I want to do my best to make this world a better place for all of us. I'm learning all the time. I promise to be more careful with my words in the future. And I will do my best to be funnier as well. Much love to all.'
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Friday, November 30, 2012
Korean pop rides "Gangnam Style" into U.S. music scene
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - 'Gangnam Style,' the catchy Korean song by rapper Psy, may have danced its way into the American charts but the Korean pop industry isn't horsing around when it comes to capitalizing on the singer's phenomenal U.S. success.
With 'Gangnam Style' topping the current Billboard Digital Songs chart and becoming the most-watched video on YouTube ever with more than 800 million views, fellow Korean pop, or K-pop, artists are positioning themselves for similar U.S. breakthroughs.
Korea's pop music industry is thriving. Over the past two years, a handful of K-pop acts including girl group 2NE1, boy band Super Junior and nine-piece band Girls Generation have embarked on mini-promotional tours around the United States to build their audience.
'Psy has opened doors and is shining a spotlight on K-pop. People are paying attention to what's being done there,' Alina Moffat, general manager at YG Entertainment group, which manages Psy, told a recent entertainment industry conference in Los Angeles.
Psy's vibrant music video, featuring his invisible pony-riding dance, also featured K-pop artists Kim Hyun-a of girl band 4Minute, and Deasung and Seungri of boy band Big Bang, all of whom are attempting to crack the U.S. market.
'YouTube has really changed the awareness of K-pop. Both American kids and second-generation Korean American kids are discovering it,' Kye Kyoungbon Koo, director of the Korea Creative Content Agency, told a panel at a Billboard and Hollywood Reporter conference in Los Angeles in October.
MARKETING THE NEXT BIG THING
For U.S. companies looking to invest, K-pop is being marketed as the next big thing, boasting young, stylish and influential artists who command devoted fan followings.
Moffat said car companies and mobile phone brands were among those being courted at KCON, a convention held in October in Irvine in Southern California that showcased K-pop artists.
'Kids are coming, they're engaged, they want to spend money and sponsors saw that,' Moffat said.
Whether Psy or other K-pop artists can command a global following to rival Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber or Rihanna remains to be seen, but John Shim, senior producer at MTV World, believes it is the right genre to compete with pop music's biggest names.
'K-pop admittedly is a very niche genre but I also think it's the best equipped of Asian pop to cater to the U.S. audience,' Shim told Reuters.
Psy has helped to break down language barriers, keeping 'Gangnam Style' in its original Korean form instead of adapting it to English when it became an international hit.
The singer told Reuters he was persuaded to keep it that way by his manager Scooter Braun, the talent scout responsible for Justin Bieber's success, who signed Psy to his record label.
'I thought, 'Should I translate this or not?' because (the fans) have got to know what I'm talking about, and lyrics are a huge part,' Psy said.
CHATTING IN ENGLISH
But industry executives say at least one member of each K-Pop group is usually taught to be fluent in conversational English.
'The investment in language is costly, but effective,' said Ted Kim, president of South Korean music television channel Mnet. 'It really matters that Psy can go on the Ellen DeGeneres TV show and have a conversation.'
Psy said he was proud his song succeeded in Korean, but he now wants to branch out into English.
''Gangnam Style' is not the sort of thing that's going to happen twice. I've definitely got to make something in English so I can communicate with my fans right now,' the singer said.
In Korea, bands such as SM Entertainment's Super Junior and Girls Generation have became branding powerhouses, scoring endorsements ranging from cosmetics, fashion, video games, electronics and beverages.
In the United States, companies such as Samsung have already jumped on the K-pop train, sponsoring Korean boy band Big Bang's U.S. tour.
But while the genre is gaining steam in the charts, it has yet to spill into ticket sales for tours, according to Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief at Pollstar.com, which tracks concert sales.
'Psy may be able to sell out arenas in Asia, but not yet here. For the American audience, he has to prove that he's more than a novelty act,' Bongiovanni said.
'K-pop has to prove itself before large companies spend money on it,' he added.
(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)
This news article is brought to you by FREE ROMANTIC DATING SITE BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
With 'Gangnam Style' topping the current Billboard Digital Songs chart and becoming the most-watched video on YouTube ever with more than 800 million views, fellow Korean pop, or K-pop, artists are positioning themselves for similar U.S. breakthroughs.
Korea's pop music industry is thriving. Over the past two years, a handful of K-pop acts including girl group 2NE1, boy band Super Junior and nine-piece band Girls Generation have embarked on mini-promotional tours around the United States to build their audience.
'Psy has opened doors and is shining a spotlight on K-pop. People are paying attention to what's being done there,' Alina Moffat, general manager at YG Entertainment group, which manages Psy, told a recent entertainment industry conference in Los Angeles.
Psy's vibrant music video, featuring his invisible pony-riding dance, also featured K-pop artists Kim Hyun-a of girl band 4Minute, and Deasung and Seungri of boy band Big Bang, all of whom are attempting to crack the U.S. market.
'YouTube has really changed the awareness of K-pop. Both American kids and second-generation Korean American kids are discovering it,' Kye Kyoungbon Koo, director of the Korea Creative Content Agency, told a panel at a Billboard and Hollywood Reporter conference in Los Angeles in October.
MARKETING THE NEXT BIG THING
For U.S. companies looking to invest, K-pop is being marketed as the next big thing, boasting young, stylish and influential artists who command devoted fan followings.
Moffat said car companies and mobile phone brands were among those being courted at KCON, a convention held in October in Irvine in Southern California that showcased K-pop artists.
'Kids are coming, they're engaged, they want to spend money and sponsors saw that,' Moffat said.
Whether Psy or other K-pop artists can command a global following to rival Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber or Rihanna remains to be seen, but John Shim, senior producer at MTV World, believes it is the right genre to compete with pop music's biggest names.
'K-pop admittedly is a very niche genre but I also think it's the best equipped of Asian pop to cater to the U.S. audience,' Shim told Reuters.
Psy has helped to break down language barriers, keeping 'Gangnam Style' in its original Korean form instead of adapting it to English when it became an international hit.
The singer told Reuters he was persuaded to keep it that way by his manager Scooter Braun, the talent scout responsible for Justin Bieber's success, who signed Psy to his record label.
'I thought, 'Should I translate this or not?' because (the fans) have got to know what I'm talking about, and lyrics are a huge part,' Psy said.
CHATTING IN ENGLISH
But industry executives say at least one member of each K-Pop group is usually taught to be fluent in conversational English.
'The investment in language is costly, but effective,' said Ted Kim, president of South Korean music television channel Mnet. 'It really matters that Psy can go on the Ellen DeGeneres TV show and have a conversation.'
Psy said he was proud his song succeeded in Korean, but he now wants to branch out into English.
''Gangnam Style' is not the sort of thing that's going to happen twice. I've definitely got to make something in English so I can communicate with my fans right now,' the singer said.
In Korea, bands such as SM Entertainment's Super Junior and Girls Generation have became branding powerhouses, scoring endorsements ranging from cosmetics, fashion, video games, electronics and beverages.
In the United States, companies such as Samsung have already jumped on the K-pop train, sponsoring Korean boy band Big Bang's U.S. tour.
But while the genre is gaining steam in the charts, it has yet to spill into ticket sales for tours, according to Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief at Pollstar.com, which tracks concert sales.
'Psy may be able to sell out arenas in Asia, but not yet here. For the American audience, he has to prove that he's more than a novelty act,' Bongiovanni said.
'K-pop has to prove itself before large companies spend money on it,' he added.
(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)
This news article is brought to you by FREE ROMANTIC DATING SITE BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
EBay's double tax base prompts calls for investigation
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and Germany may have missed out on a combined $1 billion in sales tax since online marketplace eBay picked a tiny Luxembourg office as its base for EU sales, a shift that lawmakers say should now be investigated.
EBay's nomination of Luxembourg unit eBay Europe Sarl - with a staff of nine - as its provider of services to EU clients allows it to charge customers in Europe a low rate of sales tax, often known as Value Added Tax, helping it to compete against rivals.
However, the unit doesn't actually receive the money from sales. Instead, eBay said it continues to channel revenues through a Berne-based unit, allowing the company also to benefit from what Swiss tax lawyers say is the most competitive corporate income tax regime in Europe.
EU rules allow companies to establish subsidiaries in Luxembourg and levy VAT at Luxembourg's low VAT rate on sales to customers across the bloc.
However, the rules also allow individual EU taxmen to challenge any claim to Luxembourg residence, and the right to charge Luxembourg VAT, in their domestic courts, if the taxman feels a Luxembourg-based subsidiary does not have sufficient staff or assets to support its claim to be the true supplier of goods or services.
Tax experts say eBay's arrangement, which appears to give eBay the best of both income and sales tax worlds, could be open to challenge, and lawmakers in the UK and Germany want their taxmen to investigate.
'I hope that HMRC (UK tax authority Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) takes note ... and takes prompt action,' said Margaret Hodge, member of parliament and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which monitors government finances.
'I will be seeking assurance that they are, next time we take evidence from HMRC,' she added. Officials from HMRC are due to testify to the PAC in early December as part of the committee's investigation into tax matters.
Sven Giegold, member of the European Parliament for Germany's Green Party, said he wanted the German tax authorities to 'have a very critical look at this'.
It is common for companies to seek to reduce their tax bills, and a number of multinationals have established bases in Luxembourg so they can charge customers lower levels of VAT.
EBay said HMRC was aware of all its tax arrangements and that it was confident it met all its tax liabilities in the UK and elsewhere.
'In all countries and at all times, eBay is fully compliant with national, EU and international tax rules (including the OECD) including the remittance of VAT to the appropriate authorities,' an eBay spokesman said in an emailed statement.
The UK, German, French and Luxembourg tax authorities declined to comment on eBay, citing rules on taxpayer confidentiality.
LOWER THRESHOLD
Big companies' tax practices have risen to the top of the political agenda in Europe in the past year, with lawmakers growing increasingly frustrated with the way in which companies such as search engine company Google pay almost no income tax in countries where they have billions of dollars in sales.
The companies escape liability for income taxes in countries like the UK by arguing the value created by their business, and therefore the location where the profit should be realized, is not the place where the customer resides, but rather in the location where the intellectual property underpinning the product or service is based.
Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, said this was a valid economic argument and that if, for example, HMRC wants to claim more income tax from Google, it has to prove the company is generating more value in the UK than it is declaring.
This would require a thorough deconstruction of its business model and supply chain.
However, it is easier to establish liability to VAT, since this tax hinges simply on the location of the buyer and seller.
'The threshold is lower,' said Simon Newark, head of VAT at accountants UHY Hacker.
'There are a lot more aspects for HMRC to challenge in VAT than in direct (income) tax.'
For tax purposes, the EU deems eBay's online platform an 'electronically supplied service', a category that also covers e-Books and music downloads.
Under EU rules, suppliers of such services based within the bloc are supposed to charge EU customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the supplier is based.
A number of suppliers of electronic services, including Amazon.Com Inc and Apple Inc's iTunes have established European headquarters in Luxembourg to enable them to charge customers lower VAT rates than prevail in their customers' countries.
Luxembourg has traditionally charged the lowest standard VAT rates in the European Union. Its 15 percent rate compares with rates of 19-25 percent in most other EU members.
By charging customers VAT at Luxembourg's rate eBay is better able to compete with rivals based elsewhere in the EU, such as Britain's eBid, which must charge customers VAT at the standard UK rate of 20 percent.
However, to be entitled to charge Luxembourg rates, a company has to be able to prove in British, German or EU courts that it is genuinely based in the Grand Duchy.
Companies selling to EU customers from outside the EU - as eBay was until the 2007 nomination of eBay Europe Sarl as supplier to EU clients - must charge European customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the customer resides, and to pay that VAT to the taxman in the customer's country.
There is no definitive checklist that determines the true base of a company and any decision by a national court can be challenged in the European Court of Justice. In the UK, HMRC said it approached the matter on a case-by-case basis, and disputes are often resolved in court.
'HMRC will challenge any arrangements where it is claimed that supplies are made from a particular country but the business does not have the necessary resources to make those supplies,' a spokesman said.
EUROPE EXPANSION
EBay, which is headquartered in San Jose, California, moved into Europe in 1999 when it established eBay International in Berne. Switzerland's low income tax regime for foreign companies was highly beneficial for the auction site. 'We do have a very favorable international tax structure,' then-Chief Financial Officer Rajiv Dutta told analysts in 2002 when asked how the company managed to pay such low taxes on its non-U.S. income.
The Swiss base also meant, initially, that the company didn't have to charge EU customers VAT. But in 2003, Brussels changed the rules, which forced eBay to charge EU sellers on its platform VAT based on their residence. The VAT gathered was remitted to the tax authority in the customer's country.
Not all customers are charged VAT. Most medium-sized and big businesses are legitimately exempted from paying VAT on some purchases, such as eBay seller fees.
EBay's Swiss-based European public relations head declined to say what portion of its EU customers were liable to be charged VAT. James Cordwell, equities analyst at Atlantic Equities, estimated that such customers accounted for 40-50 percent of sales in Europe.
Since the 2007 creation of its Luxembourg operation, eBay has had German fee revenues of $6.1 billion and UK revenues of $5 billion, its annual accounts show.
If the services were supplied from Switzerland or another non-EU country, and assuming only half of customers should have been charged VAT, EU rules would have obliged eBay to collect $580 million in VAT for the German taxman and $500 million in VAT for HMRC since 2007.
EBay's entitlement to charge Luxembourg VAT on sales and to pay this to the Luxembourg taxman rests on being able to prove in court that eBay Europe Sarl is the provider of services to EU clients.
But despite German and UK fee income of $3.1 billion last year, eBay Europe Sarl recorded turnover of only 5 million euros in 2011.
John Hemming, an MP with the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the British coalition government, said the fact eBay's sales revenues did not go through the Luxembourg unit undermined the claim that it was the true provider of services to EU clients.
'If it's a real transaction, you would expect the money to pass with it, and not pass someplace else,' he said.
Rather than going to Luxembourg, the money generated from customers continues to go to Berne-based eBay International AG, a spokeswoman said.
When Reuters visited in mid November, staff at the Luxembourg office, just opposite the central post office, declined to discuss what operations the unit conducted for eBay.
A spokesman later said the office conducted activities including billing, data privacy, contracting, regulatory, management and some customer services operations.
By contrast, Amazon and iTunes do report their sales of ebooks and music downloads to EU customers through their Luxembourg units.
Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at Essex University, along with Newark and Roy-Chowdhury said a cash trail through a unit was one of the key factors used as evidence that the unit was the true supplier of a service.
UK and German tax authorities could argue that the shift in eBay's supply base to Luxembourg from Berne was therefore not genuine. If successful, they could claim back the VAT lost.
EBay declined to say why it channeled sales through Switzerland. Tax advisors say the country can still offer some companies lower tax rates than other European low-tax jurisdictions such as Ireland and Luxembourg.
Indeed, EBay's closest rival Amazon, which channels about half its non-U.S. earnings through Luxembourg, reported average income tax on overseas earnings of 6 percent in the past four years. EBay paid just 3 percent over the same period.
(Additional reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Will Waterman)
This news article is brought to you by SPACE AND ASTRONOMY NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
EBay's nomination of Luxembourg unit eBay Europe Sarl - with a staff of nine - as its provider of services to EU clients allows it to charge customers in Europe a low rate of sales tax, often known as Value Added Tax, helping it to compete against rivals.
However, the unit doesn't actually receive the money from sales. Instead, eBay said it continues to channel revenues through a Berne-based unit, allowing the company also to benefit from what Swiss tax lawyers say is the most competitive corporate income tax regime in Europe.
EU rules allow companies to establish subsidiaries in Luxembourg and levy VAT at Luxembourg's low VAT rate on sales to customers across the bloc.
However, the rules also allow individual EU taxmen to challenge any claim to Luxembourg residence, and the right to charge Luxembourg VAT, in their domestic courts, if the taxman feels a Luxembourg-based subsidiary does not have sufficient staff or assets to support its claim to be the true supplier of goods or services.
Tax experts say eBay's arrangement, which appears to give eBay the best of both income and sales tax worlds, could be open to challenge, and lawmakers in the UK and Germany want their taxmen to investigate.
'I hope that HMRC (UK tax authority Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) takes note ... and takes prompt action,' said Margaret Hodge, member of parliament and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which monitors government finances.
'I will be seeking assurance that they are, next time we take evidence from HMRC,' she added. Officials from HMRC are due to testify to the PAC in early December as part of the committee's investigation into tax matters.
Sven Giegold, member of the European Parliament for Germany's Green Party, said he wanted the German tax authorities to 'have a very critical look at this'.
It is common for companies to seek to reduce their tax bills, and a number of multinationals have established bases in Luxembourg so they can charge customers lower levels of VAT.
EBay said HMRC was aware of all its tax arrangements and that it was confident it met all its tax liabilities in the UK and elsewhere.
'In all countries and at all times, eBay is fully compliant with national, EU and international tax rules (including the OECD) including the remittance of VAT to the appropriate authorities,' an eBay spokesman said in an emailed statement.
The UK, German, French and Luxembourg tax authorities declined to comment on eBay, citing rules on taxpayer confidentiality.
LOWER THRESHOLD
Big companies' tax practices have risen to the top of the political agenda in Europe in the past year, with lawmakers growing increasingly frustrated with the way in which companies such as search engine company Google pay almost no income tax in countries where they have billions of dollars in sales.
The companies escape liability for income taxes in countries like the UK by arguing the value created by their business, and therefore the location where the profit should be realized, is not the place where the customer resides, but rather in the location where the intellectual property underpinning the product or service is based.
Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, said this was a valid economic argument and that if, for example, HMRC wants to claim more income tax from Google, it has to prove the company is generating more value in the UK than it is declaring.
This would require a thorough deconstruction of its business model and supply chain.
However, it is easier to establish liability to VAT, since this tax hinges simply on the location of the buyer and seller.
'The threshold is lower,' said Simon Newark, head of VAT at accountants UHY Hacker.
'There are a lot more aspects for HMRC to challenge in VAT than in direct (income) tax.'
For tax purposes, the EU deems eBay's online platform an 'electronically supplied service', a category that also covers e-Books and music downloads.
Under EU rules, suppliers of such services based within the bloc are supposed to charge EU customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the supplier is based.
A number of suppliers of electronic services, including Amazon.Com Inc and Apple Inc's iTunes have established European headquarters in Luxembourg to enable them to charge customers lower VAT rates than prevail in their customers' countries.
Luxembourg has traditionally charged the lowest standard VAT rates in the European Union. Its 15 percent rate compares with rates of 19-25 percent in most other EU members.
By charging customers VAT at Luxembourg's rate eBay is better able to compete with rivals based elsewhere in the EU, such as Britain's eBid, which must charge customers VAT at the standard UK rate of 20 percent.
However, to be entitled to charge Luxembourg rates, a company has to be able to prove in British, German or EU courts that it is genuinely based in the Grand Duchy.
Companies selling to EU customers from outside the EU - as eBay was until the 2007 nomination of eBay Europe Sarl as supplier to EU clients - must charge European customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the customer resides, and to pay that VAT to the taxman in the customer's country.
There is no definitive checklist that determines the true base of a company and any decision by a national court can be challenged in the European Court of Justice. In the UK, HMRC said it approached the matter on a case-by-case basis, and disputes are often resolved in court.
'HMRC will challenge any arrangements where it is claimed that supplies are made from a particular country but the business does not have the necessary resources to make those supplies,' a spokesman said.
EUROPE EXPANSION
EBay, which is headquartered in San Jose, California, moved into Europe in 1999 when it established eBay International in Berne. Switzerland's low income tax regime for foreign companies was highly beneficial for the auction site. 'We do have a very favorable international tax structure,' then-Chief Financial Officer Rajiv Dutta told analysts in 2002 when asked how the company managed to pay such low taxes on its non-U.S. income.
The Swiss base also meant, initially, that the company didn't have to charge EU customers VAT. But in 2003, Brussels changed the rules, which forced eBay to charge EU sellers on its platform VAT based on their residence. The VAT gathered was remitted to the tax authority in the customer's country.
Not all customers are charged VAT. Most medium-sized and big businesses are legitimately exempted from paying VAT on some purchases, such as eBay seller fees.
EBay's Swiss-based European public relations head declined to say what portion of its EU customers were liable to be charged VAT. James Cordwell, equities analyst at Atlantic Equities, estimated that such customers accounted for 40-50 percent of sales in Europe.
Since the 2007 creation of its Luxembourg operation, eBay has had German fee revenues of $6.1 billion and UK revenues of $5 billion, its annual accounts show.
If the services were supplied from Switzerland or another non-EU country, and assuming only half of customers should have been charged VAT, EU rules would have obliged eBay to collect $580 million in VAT for the German taxman and $500 million in VAT for HMRC since 2007.
EBay's entitlement to charge Luxembourg VAT on sales and to pay this to the Luxembourg taxman rests on being able to prove in court that eBay Europe Sarl is the provider of services to EU clients.
But despite German and UK fee income of $3.1 billion last year, eBay Europe Sarl recorded turnover of only 5 million euros in 2011.
John Hemming, an MP with the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the British coalition government, said the fact eBay's sales revenues did not go through the Luxembourg unit undermined the claim that it was the true provider of services to EU clients.
'If it's a real transaction, you would expect the money to pass with it, and not pass someplace else,' he said.
Rather than going to Luxembourg, the money generated from customers continues to go to Berne-based eBay International AG, a spokeswoman said.
When Reuters visited in mid November, staff at the Luxembourg office, just opposite the central post office, declined to discuss what operations the unit conducted for eBay.
A spokesman later said the office conducted activities including billing, data privacy, contracting, regulatory, management and some customer services operations.
By contrast, Amazon and iTunes do report their sales of ebooks and music downloads to EU customers through their Luxembourg units.
Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at Essex University, along with Newark and Roy-Chowdhury said a cash trail through a unit was one of the key factors used as evidence that the unit was the true supplier of a service.
UK and German tax authorities could argue that the shift in eBay's supply base to Luxembourg from Berne was therefore not genuine. If successful, they could claim back the VAT lost.
EBay declined to say why it channeled sales through Switzerland. Tax advisors say the country can still offer some companies lower tax rates than other European low-tax jurisdictions such as Ireland and Luxembourg.
Indeed, EBay's closest rival Amazon, which channels about half its non-U.S. earnings through Luxembourg, reported average income tax on overseas earnings of 6 percent in the past four years. EBay paid just 3 percent over the same period.
(Additional reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Will Waterman)
This news article is brought to you by SPACE AND ASTRONOMY NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
EU plan could push up access costs for broadband challengers
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Smaller telecoms providers may have to pay more to rent space on networks owned by former monopolies as part of efforts to boost the fiber broadband rollout, a European Commission document seen by Reuters showed.
The Commission's recommendation came after strong criticism from major operators, such as Telecom Italia SpA, forced it to backtrack from an initial proposal to cut such access charges to legacy copper networks.
The proposal underlines EU concerns that economic growth in the 27-country European Union could lag behind the United States and Asia because of a lack of broadband connectivity.
Under the new plan, which is subject to scrutiny by national telecoms regulators and could still be modified, monthly rental access prices per customer would have to range between 8 and 10 euros by the end of 2016.
If the range is adopted, it could lead to higher charges in 10 EU countries including the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Estonia, which currently offer rates below 8 euros.
For example, the rent in Slovakia would double from the 4.20 euros charged in October 2011, the Commission's data showed.
On the other hand, Ireland, which currently has the highest monthly cost at 12.41 euros, Finland, Britain and Luxembourg would have to bring their prices down.
Incumbent operators such as Deutsche Telekom AG, Telefonica SA, France Telecom SA and Telecom Italia, inherited copper-based networks when they were privatized in the 1990s.
The former monopolies have said they need the cash from rents to invest in costly fiber broadband which can deliver much higher speeds than traditional copper lines.
The EU document also said that new fiber broadband networks would not be subject to regulation. The EU executive had floated the idea in July, saying a regulatory holiday would be valid as long as there was enough competition in the market.
'The national regulatory authority (NRA) should not maintain or impose price control obligations, including obligations for cost-orientation,' the document said.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Helen Massy-Beresford)
This news article is brought to you by WOMEN'S BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
The Commission's recommendation came after strong criticism from major operators, such as Telecom Italia SpA, forced it to backtrack from an initial proposal to cut such access charges to legacy copper networks.
The proposal underlines EU concerns that economic growth in the 27-country European Union could lag behind the United States and Asia because of a lack of broadband connectivity.
Under the new plan, which is subject to scrutiny by national telecoms regulators and could still be modified, monthly rental access prices per customer would have to range between 8 and 10 euros by the end of 2016.
If the range is adopted, it could lead to higher charges in 10 EU countries including the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Estonia, which currently offer rates below 8 euros.
For example, the rent in Slovakia would double from the 4.20 euros charged in October 2011, the Commission's data showed.
On the other hand, Ireland, which currently has the highest monthly cost at 12.41 euros, Finland, Britain and Luxembourg would have to bring their prices down.
Incumbent operators such as Deutsche Telekom AG, Telefonica SA, France Telecom SA and Telecom Italia, inherited copper-based networks when they were privatized in the 1990s.
The former monopolies have said they need the cash from rents to invest in costly fiber broadband which can deliver much higher speeds than traditional copper lines.
The EU document also said that new fiber broadband networks would not be subject to regulation. The EU executive had floated the idea in July, saying a regulatory holiday would be valid as long as there was enough competition in the market.
'The national regulatory authority (NRA) should not maintain or impose price control obligations, including obligations for cost-orientation,' the document said.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Helen Massy-Beresford)
This news article is brought to you by WOMEN'S BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Insight: EBay's double tax base prompts calls for investigation
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and Germany may have missed out on a combined $1 billion in sales tax since online marketplace eBay picked a tiny Luxembourg office as its base for EU sales, a shift that lawmakers say should now be investigated.
EBay's nomination of Luxembourg unit eBay Europe Sarl - with a staff of nine - as its provider of services to EU clients allows it to charge customers in Europe a low rate of sales tax, often known as Value Added Tax, helping it to compete against rivals.
However, the unit doesn't actually receive the money from sales. Instead, eBay said it continues to channel revenues through a Berne-based unit, allowing the company also to benefit from what Swiss tax lawyers say is the most competitive corporate income tax regime in Europe.
EU rules allow companies to establish subsidiaries in Luxembourg and levy VAT at Luxembourg's low VAT rate on sales to customers across the bloc.
However, the rules also allow individual EU taxmen to challenge any claim to Luxembourg residence, and the right to charge Luxembourg VAT, in their domestic courts, if the taxman feels a Luxembourg-based subsidiary does not have sufficient staff or assets to support its claim to be the true supplier of goods or services.
Tax experts say eBay's arrangement, which appears to give eBay the best of both income and sales tax worlds, could be open to challenge, and lawmakers in the UK and Germany want their taxmen to investigate.
'I hope that HMRC (UK tax authority Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) takes note ... and takes prompt action,' said Margaret Hodge, member of parliament and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which monitors government finances.
'I will be seeking assurance that they are, next time we take evidence from HMRC,' she added. Officials from HMRC are due to testify to the PAC in early December as part of the committee's investigation into tax matters.
Sven Giegold, member of the European Parliament for Germany's Green Party, said he wanted the German tax authorities to 'have a very critical look at this'.
It is common for companies to seek to reduce their tax bills, and a number of multinationals have established bases in Luxembourg so they can charge customers lower levels of VAT.
EBay said it was confident it met all its tax liabilities in the UK and elsewhere.
'In all countries and at all times, eBay is fully compliant with national, EU and international tax rules (including the OECD) including the remittance of VAT to the appropriate authorities,' an eBay spokesman said in an emailed statement.
The UK, German, French and Luxembourg tax authorities declined to comment on eBay, citing rules on taxpayer confidentiality.
LOWER THRESHOLD
Big companies' tax practices have risen to the top of the political agenda in Europe in the past year, with lawmakers growing increasingly frustrated with the way in which companies such as search engine company Google pay almost no income tax in countries where they have billions of dollars in sales.
The companies escape liability for income taxes in countries like the UK by arguing the value created by their business, and therefore the location where the profit should be realized, is not the place where the customer resides, but rather in the location where the intellectual property underpinning the product or service is based.
Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, said this was a valid economic argument and that if, for example, HMRC wants to claim more income tax from Google, it has to prove the company is generating more value in the UK than it is declaring.
This would require a thorough deconstruction of its business model and supply chain.
However, it is easier to establish liability to VAT, since this tax hinges simply on the location of the buyer and seller.
'The threshold is lower,' said Simon Newark, head of VAT at accountants UHY Hacker.
'There are a lot more aspects for HMRC to challenge in VAT than in direct (income) tax.'
For tax purposes, the EU deems eBay's online platform an 'electronically supplied service', a category that also covers e-Books and music downloads.
Under EU rules, suppliers of such services based within the bloc are supposed to charge EU customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the supplier is based.
A number of suppliers of electronic services, including Amazon.Com Inc and Apple Inc's iTunes have established European headquarters in Luxembourg to enable them to charge customers lower VAT rates than prevail in their customers' countries.
Luxembourg has traditionally charged the lowest standard VAT rates in the European Union. Its 15 percent rate compares with rates of 19-25 percent in most other EU members.
By charging customers VAT at Luxembourg's rate eBay is better able to compete with rivals based elsewhere in the EU, such as Britain's eBid, which must charge customers VAT at the standard UK rate of 20 percent.
However, to be entitled to charge Luxembourg rates, a company has to be able to prove in British, German or EU courts that it is genuinely based in the Grand Duchy.
Companies selling to EU customers from outside the EU - as eBay was until the 2007 nomination of eBay Europe Sarl as supplier to EU clients - must charge European customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the customer resides, and to pay that VAT to the taxman in the customer's country.
There is no definitive checklist that determines the true base of a company and any decision by a national court can be challenged in the European Court of Justice. In the UK, HMRC said it approached the matter on a case-by-case basis, and disputes are often resolved in court.
'HMRC will challenge any arrangements where it is claimed that supplies are made from a particular country but the business does not have the necessary resources to make those supplies,' a spokesman said.
EUROPE EXPANSION
EBay, which is headquartered in San Jose, California, moved into Europe in 1999 when it established eBay International in Berne. Switzerland's low income tax regime for foreign companies was highly beneficial for the auction site. 'We do have a very favorable international tax structure,' then-Chief Financial Officer Rajiv Dutta told analysts in 2002 when asked how the company managed to pay such low taxes on its non-U.S. income.
The Swiss base also meant, initially, that the company didn't have to charge EU customers VAT. But in 2003, Brussels changed the rules, which forced eBay to charge EU sellers on its platform VAT based on their residence. The VAT gathered was remitted to the tax authority in the customer's country.
Not all customers are charged VAT. Most medium-sized and big businesses are legitimately exempted from paying VAT on some purchases, such as eBay seller fees.
EBay's Swiss-based European public relations head declined to say what portion of its EU customers were liable to be charged VAT. James Cordwell, equities analyst at Atlantic Equities, estimated that such customers accounted for 40-50 percent of sales in Europe.
Since the 2007 creation of its Luxembourg operation, eBay has had German fee revenues of $6.1 billion and UK revenues of $5 billion, its annual accounts show.
If the services were supplied from Switzerland or another non-EU country, and assuming only half of customers should have been charged VAT, EU rules would have obliged eBay to collect $580 million in VAT for the German taxman and $500 million in VAT for HMRC since 2007.
EBay's entitlement to charge Luxembourg VAT on sales and to pay this to the Luxembourg taxman rests on being able to prove in court that eBay Europe Sarl is the provider of services to EU clients.
But despite German and UK fee income of $3.1 billion last year, eBay Europe Sarl recorded turnover of only 5 million euros in 2011.
John Hemming, an MP with the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the British coalition government, said the fact eBay's sales revenues did not go through the Luxembourg unit undermined the claim that it was the true provider of services to EU clients.
'If it's a real transaction, you would expect the money to pass with it, and not pass someplace else,' he said.
Rather than going to Luxembourg, the money generated from customers continues to go to Berne-based eBay International AG, a spokeswoman said.
When Reuters visited in mid November, staff at the Luxembourg office, just opposite the central post office, declined to discuss what operations the unit conducted for eBay.
By contrast, Amazon and iTunes do report their sales of ebooks and music downloads to EU customers through their Luxembourg units.
Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at Essex University, along with Newark and Roy-Chowdhury said a cash trail through a unit was one of the key factors used as evidence that the unit was the true supplier of a service.
UK and German tax authorities could argue that the shift in eBay's supply base to Luxembourg from Berne was therefore not genuine. If successful, they could claim back the VAT lost.
EBay declined to say why it channeled sales through Switzerland. Tax advisors say the country can still offer some companies lower tax rates than other European low-tax jurisdictions such as Ireland and Luxembourg.
Indeed, EBay's closest rival Amazon, which channels about half its non-U.S. earnings through Luxembourg, reported average income tax on overseas earnings of 6 percent in the past four years. EBay paid just 3 percent over the same period.
(Reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by Will Waterman)
This news article is brought to you by DATING ADVICE 201 - where latest news are our top priority.
EBay's nomination of Luxembourg unit eBay Europe Sarl - with a staff of nine - as its provider of services to EU clients allows it to charge customers in Europe a low rate of sales tax, often known as Value Added Tax, helping it to compete against rivals.
However, the unit doesn't actually receive the money from sales. Instead, eBay said it continues to channel revenues through a Berne-based unit, allowing the company also to benefit from what Swiss tax lawyers say is the most competitive corporate income tax regime in Europe.
EU rules allow companies to establish subsidiaries in Luxembourg and levy VAT at Luxembourg's low VAT rate on sales to customers across the bloc.
However, the rules also allow individual EU taxmen to challenge any claim to Luxembourg residence, and the right to charge Luxembourg VAT, in their domestic courts, if the taxman feels a Luxembourg-based subsidiary does not have sufficient staff or assets to support its claim to be the true supplier of goods or services.
Tax experts say eBay's arrangement, which appears to give eBay the best of both income and sales tax worlds, could be open to challenge, and lawmakers in the UK and Germany want their taxmen to investigate.
'I hope that HMRC (UK tax authority Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) takes note ... and takes prompt action,' said Margaret Hodge, member of parliament and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which monitors government finances.
'I will be seeking assurance that they are, next time we take evidence from HMRC,' she added. Officials from HMRC are due to testify to the PAC in early December as part of the committee's investigation into tax matters.
Sven Giegold, member of the European Parliament for Germany's Green Party, said he wanted the German tax authorities to 'have a very critical look at this'.
It is common for companies to seek to reduce their tax bills, and a number of multinationals have established bases in Luxembourg so they can charge customers lower levels of VAT.
EBay said it was confident it met all its tax liabilities in the UK and elsewhere.
'In all countries and at all times, eBay is fully compliant with national, EU and international tax rules (including the OECD) including the remittance of VAT to the appropriate authorities,' an eBay spokesman said in an emailed statement.
The UK, German, French and Luxembourg tax authorities declined to comment on eBay, citing rules on taxpayer confidentiality.
LOWER THRESHOLD
Big companies' tax practices have risen to the top of the political agenda in Europe in the past year, with lawmakers growing increasingly frustrated with the way in which companies such as search engine company Google pay almost no income tax in countries where they have billions of dollars in sales.
The companies escape liability for income taxes in countries like the UK by arguing the value created by their business, and therefore the location where the profit should be realized, is not the place where the customer resides, but rather in the location where the intellectual property underpinning the product or service is based.
Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, said this was a valid economic argument and that if, for example, HMRC wants to claim more income tax from Google, it has to prove the company is generating more value in the UK than it is declaring.
This would require a thorough deconstruction of its business model and supply chain.
However, it is easier to establish liability to VAT, since this tax hinges simply on the location of the buyer and seller.
'The threshold is lower,' said Simon Newark, head of VAT at accountants UHY Hacker.
'There are a lot more aspects for HMRC to challenge in VAT than in direct (income) tax.'
For tax purposes, the EU deems eBay's online platform an 'electronically supplied service', a category that also covers e-Books and music downloads.
Under EU rules, suppliers of such services based within the bloc are supposed to charge EU customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the supplier is based.
A number of suppliers of electronic services, including Amazon.Com Inc and Apple Inc's iTunes have established European headquarters in Luxembourg to enable them to charge customers lower VAT rates than prevail in their customers' countries.
Luxembourg has traditionally charged the lowest standard VAT rates in the European Union. Its 15 percent rate compares with rates of 19-25 percent in most other EU members.
By charging customers VAT at Luxembourg's rate eBay is better able to compete with rivals based elsewhere in the EU, such as Britain's eBid, which must charge customers VAT at the standard UK rate of 20 percent.
However, to be entitled to charge Luxembourg rates, a company has to be able to prove in British, German or EU courts that it is genuinely based in the Grand Duchy.
Companies selling to EU customers from outside the EU - as eBay was until the 2007 nomination of eBay Europe Sarl as supplier to EU clients - must charge European customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the customer resides, and to pay that VAT to the taxman in the customer's country.
There is no definitive checklist that determines the true base of a company and any decision by a national court can be challenged in the European Court of Justice. In the UK, HMRC said it approached the matter on a case-by-case basis, and disputes are often resolved in court.
'HMRC will challenge any arrangements where it is claimed that supplies are made from a particular country but the business does not have the necessary resources to make those supplies,' a spokesman said.
EUROPE EXPANSION
EBay, which is headquartered in San Jose, California, moved into Europe in 1999 when it established eBay International in Berne. Switzerland's low income tax regime for foreign companies was highly beneficial for the auction site. 'We do have a very favorable international tax structure,' then-Chief Financial Officer Rajiv Dutta told analysts in 2002 when asked how the company managed to pay such low taxes on its non-U.S. income.
The Swiss base also meant, initially, that the company didn't have to charge EU customers VAT. But in 2003, Brussels changed the rules, which forced eBay to charge EU sellers on its platform VAT based on their residence. The VAT gathered was remitted to the tax authority in the customer's country.
Not all customers are charged VAT. Most medium-sized and big businesses are legitimately exempted from paying VAT on some purchases, such as eBay seller fees.
EBay's Swiss-based European public relations head declined to say what portion of its EU customers were liable to be charged VAT. James Cordwell, equities analyst at Atlantic Equities, estimated that such customers accounted for 40-50 percent of sales in Europe.
Since the 2007 creation of its Luxembourg operation, eBay has had German fee revenues of $6.1 billion and UK revenues of $5 billion, its annual accounts show.
If the services were supplied from Switzerland or another non-EU country, and assuming only half of customers should have been charged VAT, EU rules would have obliged eBay to collect $580 million in VAT for the German taxman and $500 million in VAT for HMRC since 2007.
EBay's entitlement to charge Luxembourg VAT on sales and to pay this to the Luxembourg taxman rests on being able to prove in court that eBay Europe Sarl is the provider of services to EU clients.
But despite German and UK fee income of $3.1 billion last year, eBay Europe Sarl recorded turnover of only 5 million euros in 2011.
John Hemming, an MP with the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the British coalition government, said the fact eBay's sales revenues did not go through the Luxembourg unit undermined the claim that it was the true provider of services to EU clients.
'If it's a real transaction, you would expect the money to pass with it, and not pass someplace else,' he said.
Rather than going to Luxembourg, the money generated from customers continues to go to Berne-based eBay International AG, a spokeswoman said.
When Reuters visited in mid November, staff at the Luxembourg office, just opposite the central post office, declined to discuss what operations the unit conducted for eBay.
By contrast, Amazon and iTunes do report their sales of ebooks and music downloads to EU customers through their Luxembourg units.
Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at Essex University, along with Newark and Roy-Chowdhury said a cash trail through a unit was one of the key factors used as evidence that the unit was the true supplier of a service.
UK and German tax authorities could argue that the shift in eBay's supply base to Luxembourg from Berne was therefore not genuine. If successful, they could claim back the VAT lost.
EBay declined to say why it channeled sales through Switzerland. Tax advisors say the country can still offer some companies lower tax rates than other European low-tax jurisdictions such as Ireland and Luxembourg.
Indeed, EBay's closest rival Amazon, which channels about half its non-U.S. earnings through Luxembourg, reported average income tax on overseas earnings of 6 percent in the past four years. EBay paid just 3 percent over the same period.
(Reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by Will Waterman)
This news article is brought to you by DATING ADVICE 201 - where latest news are our top priority.
Australia's tobacco marketing laws give retailers a headache
SYDNEY (Reuters) - James Yu, who runs the King of the Pack tobacconist in central Sydney, is indignant about Australia's stringent anti-tobacco laws making manufacturers package cigarettes in drab olive green packs with pictures of ill babies and diseased body parts.
The packages, mandatory from Saturday when the laws take effect, make it hard to tell brands apart, complicating deliveries and adding to costs in his cramped, dark booth.
The legislation, the most Draconian in the world, strips packs of all branding, bright colors and logos, leaving only the name printed in identical small font.
'It used to take me an hour to unload a delivery, now it takes me four hours,' Yu said, demonstrating how difficult it is to find the brand names.
'The government should have just banned them altogether and then we'd go ok, fine, we're done, we'll shut up shop,' he said, throwing his hands up in the air.
Australia's plain packaging laws are a potential watershed for the global industry, which serves 1 billion regular smokers, according to World Health Organization statistics.
While Australia has one of the world's lowest smoking rates and the changes will have little impact on multinationals' profits, other countries are considering similar steps.
The government says the aim is to deter young people from smoking by stripping the habit of glamour. It is relying on studies showing that if people have not started smoking by age 26, there is a 99 percent chance they will never take it up.
'Even from a very early age, you can see that kids understand the message that the tobacco company is trying to sell through their branding,' Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek told Reuters, citing studies that showed children made linkages such as crown logos and princesses.
The potential hitch, experts say, is the popularity of social media with the very demographic the plan is targeting.
After a series of Australian laws banning TV advertising and sports sponsorship and requiring most sellers to hide cigarettes from view, online is the final frontier for tobacco marketing.
Australia has banned online advertising by local companies and sites, but the door cannot be slammed at the border.
'If you are a tobacco marketer and you've only got this small window left to promote your products, online is the compelling place for you to be in,' said Becky Freeman, a public health researcher at Sydney University.
Freeman noted an increase in 'average Joe' reviews of brands on social media sites such as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.
'We have to ask, is that just a private citizen who really loves Marlboro cigarettes and they've gone to the trouble of making a video, or is there a marketing company involved?'
Scott McIntyre of British American Tobacco Australia, maker of Winfield cigarettes, made popular by ads featuring 'Crocodile Dundee' actor Paul Hogan in the 1970s, said the industry was focused on dealing with the new rules rather than marketing.
WINNERS AND LOSERS
The industry lobbied hard against the laws. Tobacco firms said they would boost black market trade, leading to cheaper, more accessible cigarettes.
'There will be serious unintended consequences from the legislation,' said McIntyre. 'Counterfeiters from China and Indonesia will bring lots more of these products down to sell on the streets of Australia.'
Others say the laws have boosted their business.
Sandra Ha of Zico Import Pty Ltd, a small family business, said demand for cigarette cases, silicon covers to mask the unpalatable packages, had shot up from almost nothing two months ago since British American Tobacco, Britain's Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco lost a challenge to the laws in Australia's High Court.
Ha said Zico had sold up to 6,000 to wholesale outlets and was awaiting new stock. 'This is good business for us.'
COPYCATS
The industry has shifted its focus to potential copycat legislation elsewhere. Ukraine, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have filed complaints with the World Trade Organization, funded by the tobacco industry, claiming the laws unfairly restrict trade, although their trade with Australia is minimal.
A WTO ruling is likely in mid-2013.
Plibersek said the government has held discussions with other countries considering similar laws.
Canada was the first country to make photograph warnings mandatory in 2001. They now extend to more than 40 countries, including Brazil, Turkey and Ukraine. Tougher laws are being considered in Britain, New Zealand, South Africa and India.
Many smokers in Australia remain defiant.
'The pictures don't affect me. I just ignore them. You just grab a smoke and put it away,' said Victor El Hage as he purchased a pack with a photograph of a mouth tumor. 'Honestly, there's only one reason I'd stop, and that's my little girl.'
(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in GENEVA; Editing by Ron Popeski)
This news article is brought to you by GAMING NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
The packages, mandatory from Saturday when the laws take effect, make it hard to tell brands apart, complicating deliveries and adding to costs in his cramped, dark booth.
The legislation, the most Draconian in the world, strips packs of all branding, bright colors and logos, leaving only the name printed in identical small font.
'It used to take me an hour to unload a delivery, now it takes me four hours,' Yu said, demonstrating how difficult it is to find the brand names.
'The government should have just banned them altogether and then we'd go ok, fine, we're done, we'll shut up shop,' he said, throwing his hands up in the air.
Australia's plain packaging laws are a potential watershed for the global industry, which serves 1 billion regular smokers, according to World Health Organization statistics.
While Australia has one of the world's lowest smoking rates and the changes will have little impact on multinationals' profits, other countries are considering similar steps.
The government says the aim is to deter young people from smoking by stripping the habit of glamour. It is relying on studies showing that if people have not started smoking by age 26, there is a 99 percent chance they will never take it up.
'Even from a very early age, you can see that kids understand the message that the tobacco company is trying to sell through their branding,' Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek told Reuters, citing studies that showed children made linkages such as crown logos and princesses.
The potential hitch, experts say, is the popularity of social media with the very demographic the plan is targeting.
After a series of Australian laws banning TV advertising and sports sponsorship and requiring most sellers to hide cigarettes from view, online is the final frontier for tobacco marketing.
Australia has banned online advertising by local companies and sites, but the door cannot be slammed at the border.
'If you are a tobacco marketer and you've only got this small window left to promote your products, online is the compelling place for you to be in,' said Becky Freeman, a public health researcher at Sydney University.
Freeman noted an increase in 'average Joe' reviews of brands on social media sites such as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.
'We have to ask, is that just a private citizen who really loves Marlboro cigarettes and they've gone to the trouble of making a video, or is there a marketing company involved?'
Scott McIntyre of British American Tobacco Australia, maker of Winfield cigarettes, made popular by ads featuring 'Crocodile Dundee' actor Paul Hogan in the 1970s, said the industry was focused on dealing with the new rules rather than marketing.
WINNERS AND LOSERS
The industry lobbied hard against the laws. Tobacco firms said they would boost black market trade, leading to cheaper, more accessible cigarettes.
'There will be serious unintended consequences from the legislation,' said McIntyre. 'Counterfeiters from China and Indonesia will bring lots more of these products down to sell on the streets of Australia.'
Others say the laws have boosted their business.
Sandra Ha of Zico Import Pty Ltd, a small family business, said demand for cigarette cases, silicon covers to mask the unpalatable packages, had shot up from almost nothing two months ago since British American Tobacco, Britain's Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco lost a challenge to the laws in Australia's High Court.
Ha said Zico had sold up to 6,000 to wholesale outlets and was awaiting new stock. 'This is good business for us.'
COPYCATS
The industry has shifted its focus to potential copycat legislation elsewhere. Ukraine, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have filed complaints with the World Trade Organization, funded by the tobacco industry, claiming the laws unfairly restrict trade, although their trade with Australia is minimal.
A WTO ruling is likely in mid-2013.
Plibersek said the government has held discussions with other countries considering similar laws.
Canada was the first country to make photograph warnings mandatory in 2001. They now extend to more than 40 countries, including Brazil, Turkey and Ukraine. Tougher laws are being considered in Britain, New Zealand, South Africa and India.
Many smokers in Australia remain defiant.
'The pictures don't affect me. I just ignore them. You just grab a smoke and put it away,' said Victor El Hage as he purchased a pack with a photograph of a mouth tumor. 'Honestly, there's only one reason I'd stop, and that's my little girl.'
(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in GENEVA; Editing by Ron Popeski)
This news article is brought to you by GAMING NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Hackers claim to have "confidential" IAEA information
VIENNA (Reuters) - Anti-Israel hackers, who the U.N. nuclear agency this week said had posted data online stolen from one of its servers, claimed in a new statement they had published confidential material obtained from the watchdog.
The statement - in the name of a group with an Iranian-sounding name - was put on a website hours after U.N. nuclear chief Yukiya Amano said on Thursday he did not believe sensitive nuclear 'safeguards' information had been compromised.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose mission is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in the world and which is investigating Iran's disputed nuclear activities, declined to comment on the latest development on Friday.
The hackers published on Sunday scores of email addresses of experts who have been working with the U.N. agency on a website, and urged the IAEA to investigate Israel's nuclear activity.
On Thursday, Amano said this was 'deeply regrettable' but he voiced confidence that no sensitive information regarding the agency's nuclear inspections had been stolen. He said the hacking happened several months ago.
The new hacker statement in the name of Parastoo (which in Farsi means swallow, a bird species, and can also be a girl's name) said that it was now publishing more data online 'to prove our ability to gain access to highly sensitive information.'
This included 'confidential...documents, satellite images, official letters, presentations,' it said in the statement dated November 29, with links to what it said was such information.
The authenticity of the material - posted on the same website as Sunday's statement - could not immediately be verified.
'It isn't obvious to me upon looking at the satellite imagery that the pictures contain sensitive and confidential IAEA data,' nuclear expert Mark Hibbs, of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank, said.
Jeffrey Lewis, of the U.S.-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, suggested the hacked data concerned information related to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, rather than confidential information on IAEA inspections.
'Hacking the IAEA and interfering with efforts to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes doesn't get us any closer to a world in which Israel signs the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty),' Lewis said in a blog.
The experts whose email addresses were hacked have nothing to do with 'safeguards, nuclear weapons or Israel,' he said.
'Safeguards' means activities conducted by IAEA inspectors in examining member states' nuclear activities, including Iran's, to make sure that no atomic material is diverted for military purposes. Such information is seen as top secret.
ACCESS TO 'NEW SERVER'
The latest Parastoo statement again called for an IAEA investigation into the nuclear activities of Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state.
That is a demand often voiced by Iran and Arab states.
The IAEA has not said who might be behind the hacking.
There has been an increase in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year, coinciding with a deepening standoff with the West over Tehran's nuclear program.
Iranian officials have tended to deny involvement. But they say they have continued to come under cyber assault themselves, with systems at Iran's own oil facilities, communications and infrastructure firms suffering problems last month.
The IAEA earlier this week said the server which had been hacked had been closed down. Parastoo's latest statement said the information now posted online was 'extracted from one of IAEA's new servers that we have access to.'
Israel and the United States accuse Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran denies this.
(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl)
This news article is brought to you by DATING AND RELATIONSHIP ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
The statement - in the name of a group with an Iranian-sounding name - was put on a website hours after U.N. nuclear chief Yukiya Amano said on Thursday he did not believe sensitive nuclear 'safeguards' information had been compromised.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose mission is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in the world and which is investigating Iran's disputed nuclear activities, declined to comment on the latest development on Friday.
The hackers published on Sunday scores of email addresses of experts who have been working with the U.N. agency on a website, and urged the IAEA to investigate Israel's nuclear activity.
On Thursday, Amano said this was 'deeply regrettable' but he voiced confidence that no sensitive information regarding the agency's nuclear inspections had been stolen. He said the hacking happened several months ago.
The new hacker statement in the name of Parastoo (which in Farsi means swallow, a bird species, and can also be a girl's name) said that it was now publishing more data online 'to prove our ability to gain access to highly sensitive information.'
This included 'confidential...documents, satellite images, official letters, presentations,' it said in the statement dated November 29, with links to what it said was such information.
The authenticity of the material - posted on the same website as Sunday's statement - could not immediately be verified.
'It isn't obvious to me upon looking at the satellite imagery that the pictures contain sensitive and confidential IAEA data,' nuclear expert Mark Hibbs, of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank, said.
Jeffrey Lewis, of the U.S.-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, suggested the hacked data concerned information related to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, rather than confidential information on IAEA inspections.
'Hacking the IAEA and interfering with efforts to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes doesn't get us any closer to a world in which Israel signs the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty),' Lewis said in a blog.
The experts whose email addresses were hacked have nothing to do with 'safeguards, nuclear weapons or Israel,' he said.
'Safeguards' means activities conducted by IAEA inspectors in examining member states' nuclear activities, including Iran's, to make sure that no atomic material is diverted for military purposes. Such information is seen as top secret.
ACCESS TO 'NEW SERVER'
The latest Parastoo statement again called for an IAEA investigation into the nuclear activities of Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state.
That is a demand often voiced by Iran and Arab states.
The IAEA has not said who might be behind the hacking.
There has been an increase in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year, coinciding with a deepening standoff with the West over Tehran's nuclear program.
Iranian officials have tended to deny involvement. But they say they have continued to come under cyber assault themselves, with systems at Iran's own oil facilities, communications and infrastructure firms suffering problems last month.
The IAEA earlier this week said the server which had been hacked had been closed down. Parastoo's latest statement said the information now posted online was 'extracted from one of IAEA's new servers that we have access to.'
Israel and the United States accuse Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran denies this.
(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl)
This news article is brought to you by DATING AND RELATIONSHIP ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Thousands touched by photograph of New York cop helping shoeless man
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A photograph of a New York City police officer crouching by a shoeless panhandler to give him a new pair of boots on a cold night in Times Square has drawn a deluge of praise after it was published on the police department's Facebook page this week.
By Thursday afternoon, nearly 394,000 people had clicked a button on the department's Facebook page to indicate that they 'liked' the photograph. Tens of thousands left comments, most praising Officer Lawrence DePrimo for his charitable deed.
The photograph was snapped by Jennifer Foster, an employee of the Pinal County Sheriff's Office in Florence, Arizona, during a trip to New York this month, according to police.
She took the picture shortly after she noticed the man asking passersby for money.
'Right when I was about to approach, one of your officers came up behind him,' Foster wrote in an email to the New York Police Department accompanying the snapshot, according to the picture caption on the department's Facebook page. She said she was some distance away, and the officer did not know he was being photographed.
'The officer said, 'I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let's put them on and take care of you.' The officer squatted down on the ground and proceeded to put socks and the new boots on this man.'
DePrimo and Foster could not be reached for comment on Thursday, and the police department did not respond to queries about the photograph.
DePrimo, 25, joined the force in 2010 and lives with his parents on Long Island, according to The New York Times. He paid $75 for the boots from a nearby Skechers store after an employee there gave him a 25 percent discount upon learning they were to be donated to a man in need.
'I wish more cops were like this guy,' one person wrote on the department's Facebook page. Others suggested there were plenty of good-hearted police officers about, even if their good deeds were not photographed or touted on Facebook.
(Editing by Paul Thomasch and Stacey Joyce)
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By Thursday afternoon, nearly 394,000 people had clicked a button on the department's Facebook page to indicate that they 'liked' the photograph. Tens of thousands left comments, most praising Officer Lawrence DePrimo for his charitable deed.
The photograph was snapped by Jennifer Foster, an employee of the Pinal County Sheriff's Office in Florence, Arizona, during a trip to New York this month, according to police.
She took the picture shortly after she noticed the man asking passersby for money.
'Right when I was about to approach, one of your officers came up behind him,' Foster wrote in an email to the New York Police Department accompanying the snapshot, according to the picture caption on the department's Facebook page. She said she was some distance away, and the officer did not know he was being photographed.
'The officer said, 'I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let's put them on and take care of you.' The officer squatted down on the ground and proceeded to put socks and the new boots on this man.'
DePrimo and Foster could not be reached for comment on Thursday, and the police department did not respond to queries about the photograph.
DePrimo, 25, joined the force in 2010 and lives with his parents on Long Island, according to The New York Times. He paid $75 for the boots from a nearby Skechers store after an employee there gave him a 25 percent discount upon learning they were to be donated to a man in need.
'I wish more cops were like this guy,' one person wrote on the department's Facebook page. Others suggested there were plenty of good-hearted police officers about, even if their good deeds were not photographed or touted on Facebook.
(Editing by Paul Thomasch and Stacey Joyce)
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MyHeritage buys Geni.com, raises $25 million in private funding round
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Family networking and genealogy website MyHeritage said it bought rival Geni.com as it continues to expand into the United States.
The Israeli company did not disclose how much it paid for Los Angeles-based Geni.com but said it was an eight-figure deal in a combination of cash and equity.
MyHeritage, which helps people delve into their ancestry and connect with long-lost relatives, is second in the sector behind market leader Ancestry.com, which agreed last month to be bought for $1.6 billion by a group led by Europe-based private equity firm Permira Advisors LLC
The acquisition is the first of the year for MyHeritage but eighth and largest since 2005. A year ago, it bought Utah-based FamilyLink.com.
MyHeritage also said it raised $25 million in a funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, while existing investors Index Ventures and Accel Partners also participated. The company has raised $49 million in total.
The funds will be used to boost growth of its historical content services and expand commercial operations worldwide. It said it will also enable MyHeritage, whose network has 72 million registered users, 1.5 billion profiles and 27 million family trees, to explore further mergers and acquisition opportunities.
(Reporting by Steven Scheer)
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The Israeli company did not disclose how much it paid for Los Angeles-based Geni.com but said it was an eight-figure deal in a combination of cash and equity.
MyHeritage, which helps people delve into their ancestry and connect with long-lost relatives, is second in the sector behind market leader Ancestry.com, which agreed last month to be bought for $1.6 billion by a group led by Europe-based private equity firm Permira Advisors LLC
The acquisition is the first of the year for MyHeritage but eighth and largest since 2005. A year ago, it bought Utah-based FamilyLink.com.
MyHeritage also said it raised $25 million in a funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, while existing investors Index Ventures and Accel Partners also participated. The company has raised $49 million in total.
The funds will be used to boost growth of its historical content services and expand commercial operations worldwide. It said it will also enable MyHeritage, whose network has 72 million registered users, 1.5 billion profiles and 27 million family trees, to explore further mergers and acquisition opportunities.
(Reporting by Steven Scheer)
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Hackers did not steal sensitive nuclear information: IAEA
VIENNA (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear agency said on Thursday a hacking incident involving one of its servers was 'deeply regrettable' but suggested that no sensitive information related to Iran's atomic activities had been stolen.
Yukiya Amano said the hacking - first reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Tuesday - had happened several months ago and that the server concerned had been closed down.
The hackers - a group using an Iranian-sounding name - on Sunday posted scores of email addresses of experts who have been working with the U.N. agency on a website, and urged the IAEA to investigate Israel's nuclear activity.
The U.N. agency did not say who it believed might have been behind the hacking. There has been an increase in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year, coinciding with a deepening standoff with the West over Tehran's nuclear program.
The most worrying, experts say, were those on Saudi oil firm Aramco - effectively destroying tens of thousands of computers - and Qatari gas export facilities.
Iranian officials have tended to deny involvement. But they say they have continued to come under cyber assault themselves, with systems at Iran's own oil facilities, communications and infrastructure firms suffering problems last month.
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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Yukiya Amano said the hacking - first reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Tuesday - had happened several months ago and that the server concerned had been closed down.
The hackers - a group using an Iranian-sounding name - on Sunday posted scores of email addresses of experts who have been working with the U.N. agency on a website, and urged the IAEA to investigate Israel's nuclear activity.
The U.N. agency did not say who it believed might have been behind the hacking. There has been an increase in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year, coinciding with a deepening standoff with the West over Tehran's nuclear program.
The most worrying, experts say, were those on Saudi oil firm Aramco - effectively destroying tens of thousands of computers - and Qatari gas export facilities.
Iranian officials have tended to deny involvement. But they say they have continued to come under cyber assault themselves, with systems at Iran's own oil facilities, communications and infrastructure firms suffering problems last month.
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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U.S. daily deals website Living Social to cut 400 jobs: WSJ
(Reuters) - U.S. daily deals online firm Living Social Inc is expected to announce on Thursday it is cutting 400 jobs, representing 9 percent of its workforce, as demand for daily deals and emailed daily discounts dries up, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a source familiar with the plans.
The Washington-based company's workforce has increased nearly 10-fold since the beginning of 2010 and it currently employs about 4,500 people worldwide, the Journal said. (http://link.reuters.com/rus34t)
Retail website Amazon.Com Inc owns a 30 percent stake in Living Social and booked a third-quarter charge of $169 million on the holding.
Living Social declined to comment to Reuters on the Journal report.
(Reporting By Neha Dimri and Alistair Barr; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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The Washington-based company's workforce has increased nearly 10-fold since the beginning of 2010 and it currently employs about 4,500 people worldwide, the Journal said. (http://link.reuters.com/rus34t)
Retail website Amazon.Com Inc owns a 30 percent stake in Living Social and booked a third-quarter charge of $169 million on the holding.
Living Social declined to comment to Reuters on the Journal report.
(Reporting By Neha Dimri and Alistair Barr; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Tougher UAE Internet dissent law shuts door to free speech: HRW
DUBAI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates has 'effectively closed the country's remaining forum for free speech' with a decree issued earlier this month that tightened the law on online dissent, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.
The U.S.-allied UAE, a Gulf trading and tourism hub and big oil producer, has not seen the serious unrest that has toppled four Arab heads of state since early last year. But it has shown little tolerance of open dissent, and more than 60 members of an Islamist group have been detained since the start of the year.
The decree by President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan imposes prison sentences for anyone who derides or caricatures the Gulf Arab country's rulers or state institutions on the web, the state news agency WAM reported on November 12.
'The UAE's cybercrimes decree reflects an attempt to ban even the most tempered criticism,' said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
'The determination to police and punish online dissent, no matter how mild, is incompatible with the image UAE rulers are trying to promote of a progressive, tolerant nation.'
A source close to the UAE government said on Wednesday the decree aimed to address technological advances in communications that could affect the rights and beliefs of people.
'This decree does not restrict freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by the UAE constitution,' the source said. 'The decree represents an extension of legislation to cover a wide variety of potential offences in many fields, including terrorism, human trafficking, money laundering and identity theft.'
POSSIBLE PRISON TERMS
WAM said the amendments 'stipulate penalties of imprisonment on any person who creates or runs an electronic website or uses any information technology medium to deride or damage the reputation or stature of the state or any of its institutions'.
This included the president, the vice president, any of the rulers of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, crown princes, deputy rulers, the national flag, the national anthem, the emblem of the state or any of its symbols.
Social networking sites have enlivened public discourse in the UAE, a major oil exporter and business hub, where state media are tightly controlled and freedom of speech restricted.
People across UAE society, from ruling family members to ministers, government supporters and dissidents, make use of sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
The amendments announced on November 12 cover a wide range of offences, including outlawing the use of the Internet for human trafficking and prostitution.
But they include jail terms for 'any person publishing any information, news, caricatures or any other kind of pictures that would pose threats to the security of the state and to its highest interests or violate its public order,' said WAM.
In addition, anyone who uses the Internet 'to call for demonstrations, marches and similar activities without a license being obtained in advance from the competent authorities' could also face imprisonment.
Human Rights Watch said the decree's vaguely worded provisions provide a legal basis to prosecute and jail people who use information technology to criticize senior officials, demand political reforms or organize unlicensed demonstrations.
'Although some provisions are aimed at preventing the proliferation of racist or sectarian views online, the principal effect of the law is severe restrictions on the rights to free expression and free association and assembly,' the New York-based watchdog said.
(Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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The U.S.-allied UAE, a Gulf trading and tourism hub and big oil producer, has not seen the serious unrest that has toppled four Arab heads of state since early last year. But it has shown little tolerance of open dissent, and more than 60 members of an Islamist group have been detained since the start of the year.
The decree by President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan imposes prison sentences for anyone who derides or caricatures the Gulf Arab country's rulers or state institutions on the web, the state news agency WAM reported on November 12.
'The UAE's cybercrimes decree reflects an attempt to ban even the most tempered criticism,' said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
'The determination to police and punish online dissent, no matter how mild, is incompatible with the image UAE rulers are trying to promote of a progressive, tolerant nation.'
A source close to the UAE government said on Wednesday the decree aimed to address technological advances in communications that could affect the rights and beliefs of people.
'This decree does not restrict freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by the UAE constitution,' the source said. 'The decree represents an extension of legislation to cover a wide variety of potential offences in many fields, including terrorism, human trafficking, money laundering and identity theft.'
POSSIBLE PRISON TERMS
WAM said the amendments 'stipulate penalties of imprisonment on any person who creates or runs an electronic website or uses any information technology medium to deride or damage the reputation or stature of the state or any of its institutions'.
This included the president, the vice president, any of the rulers of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, crown princes, deputy rulers, the national flag, the national anthem, the emblem of the state or any of its symbols.
Social networking sites have enlivened public discourse in the UAE, a major oil exporter and business hub, where state media are tightly controlled and freedom of speech restricted.
People across UAE society, from ruling family members to ministers, government supporters and dissidents, make use of sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
The amendments announced on November 12 cover a wide range of offences, including outlawing the use of the Internet for human trafficking and prostitution.
But they include jail terms for 'any person publishing any information, news, caricatures or any other kind of pictures that would pose threats to the security of the state and to its highest interests or violate its public order,' said WAM.
In addition, anyone who uses the Internet 'to call for demonstrations, marches and similar activities without a license being obtained in advance from the competent authorities' could also face imprisonment.
Human Rights Watch said the decree's vaguely worded provisions provide a legal basis to prosecute and jail people who use information technology to criticize senior officials, demand political reforms or organize unlicensed demonstrations.
'Although some provisions are aimed at preventing the proliferation of racist or sectarian views online, the principal effect of the law is severe restrictions on the rights to free expression and free association and assembly,' the New York-based watchdog said.
(Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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Italian tax police probe Google Italy again
ROME (Reuters) - Italian police launched a new tax probe into Google Italy after earlier investigations found the internet company had failed to declare income and still owed sales tax, an economy ministry document showed on Wednesday.
The earlier probe, which was launched by Italian financial police in 2007 and examined the years 2002-2006, found that Google had developed a system to transfer profits from its Italian operations to Ireland so it could benefit from a more favorable tax regime.
The earlier probe found that Google had failed to declare at least 240 million euros of income to authorities and owed more than 96 million euros in sales tax, according to the ministry's response to questions in parliament.
Google said in a statement that it complies with tax law in every country in which it operates.
'We are confident we comply with Italian law,' a spokeswoman said, adding the firm would cooperate with Italian authorities and answer any questions for the investigation.
(Reporting By Danilo Masoni, Giuseppe Fonte and Catherine Hornby)
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The earlier probe, which was launched by Italian financial police in 2007 and examined the years 2002-2006, found that Google had developed a system to transfer profits from its Italian operations to Ireland so it could benefit from a more favorable tax regime.
The earlier probe found that Google had failed to declare at least 240 million euros of income to authorities and owed more than 96 million euros in sales tax, according to the ministry's response to questions in parliament.
Google said in a statement that it complies with tax law in every country in which it operates.
'We are confident we comply with Italian law,' a spokeswoman said, adding the firm would cooperate with Italian authorities and answer any questions for the investigation.
(Reporting By Danilo Masoni, Giuseppe Fonte and Catherine Hornby)
This news article is brought to you by WOMEN'S BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
German lawmakers condemn Google campaign against copyright law
BERLIN (Reuters) - Senior German politicians have denounced as propaganda a campaign by Google to mobilize public opinion against proposed legislation to let publishers charge search engines for displaying newspaper articles.
Internet lobbyists say they are worried the German law will set a precedent for other countries such as France and Italy that have shown an interest in having Google pay publishers for the right to show their news snippets in its search results.
Lawmakers in Berlin will debate the bill in the Bundestag (lower house) on Thursday. Google says the law would make it harder for users to retrieve information via the Internet.
Google launched its campaign against the bill on Tuesday with advertisements in German newspapers and a web information site called "Defend your web".
"Such a law would hit every Internet user in Germany," Stefan Tweraser, country manager for Google Germany, said in a statement. "An ancillary copyright means less information for consumers and higher costs for companies."
The campaign has caused outrage among some members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right coalition.
"The campaign initiated by Google is cheap propaganda," said conservative lawmakers Guenter Krings and Ansgar Heveling.
"Under the guise of a supposed project for the freedom of the Internet, an attempt is being made to coopt its users for its own lobbying," the two said in a statement.
Supporters of the law argue that newspaper publishers should be able to benefit from advertising revenues earned by search engines using their content.
Under the plans, publishers would get a bigger say over how their articles are used on the Internet and could charge search engines for showing articles or extracts.
German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the Free Democrats (FDP) who share power in Merkel's government, said she was astonished that Google was trying to monopolize opinion-making. She is responsible for the law.
"PANIC MONGERING"
Germany's newspaper industry, suffering from economic slowdown and keen to get its hands on any revenues it can, backs the plans and railed against Google's campaign.
"The panic mongering from Google has no justification," Germany's BDZV newspaper association said in a statement.
"The argument from search engine companies that Internet searching and retrieval will be made more difficult is not serious. Private use, reading, following links and quoting will be possible, just as before."
Internet lobbyists in Brussels fear the European Commission is sympathetic to publisher demands for a piece of Google's profits online. Recent statements, they say, are proof.
"Consumers are not the only ones facing difficulties," Michel Barnier, the EU's internal market commissioner, said in a speech on November 7. "Think of newspaper publishers who see the content they produce being used by others to attract consumers on the net and generate advertising revenues."
French newspapers and magazines want Google to pay them for linking to their articles on Google. The French government has named a mediator to negotiate with the press and Google to try to get a deal by the end of the year.
If no deal emerges, President Francois Hollande's government will ask parliament to draft a law modifying copyright laws to protect the press from appropriation of its content online, according to a letter signed by two ministers on November 28.
(Additional reporting by Harro ten Wolde in Frankfurt, Claire Davenbport in Brussels and Leila Abboud in Paris; Writing by Madeline Chambers, Editing by Gareth Jones and)
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Internet lobbyists say they are worried the German law will set a precedent for other countries such as France and Italy that have shown an interest in having Google pay publishers for the right to show their news snippets in its search results.
Lawmakers in Berlin will debate the bill in the Bundestag (lower house) on Thursday. Google says the law would make it harder for users to retrieve information via the Internet.
Google launched its campaign against the bill on Tuesday with advertisements in German newspapers and a web information site called "Defend your web".
"Such a law would hit every Internet user in Germany," Stefan Tweraser, country manager for Google Germany, said in a statement. "An ancillary copyright means less information for consumers and higher costs for companies."
The campaign has caused outrage among some members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right coalition.
"The campaign initiated by Google is cheap propaganda," said conservative lawmakers Guenter Krings and Ansgar Heveling.
"Under the guise of a supposed project for the freedom of the Internet, an attempt is being made to coopt its users for its own lobbying," the two said in a statement.
Supporters of the law argue that newspaper publishers should be able to benefit from advertising revenues earned by search engines using their content.
Under the plans, publishers would get a bigger say over how their articles are used on the Internet and could charge search engines for showing articles or extracts.
German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the Free Democrats (FDP) who share power in Merkel's government, said she was astonished that Google was trying to monopolize opinion-making. She is responsible for the law.
"PANIC MONGERING"
Germany's newspaper industry, suffering from economic slowdown and keen to get its hands on any revenues it can, backs the plans and railed against Google's campaign.
"The panic mongering from Google has no justification," Germany's BDZV newspaper association said in a statement.
"The argument from search engine companies that Internet searching and retrieval will be made more difficult is not serious. Private use, reading, following links and quoting will be possible, just as before."
Internet lobbyists in Brussels fear the European Commission is sympathetic to publisher demands for a piece of Google's profits online. Recent statements, they say, are proof.
"Consumers are not the only ones facing difficulties," Michel Barnier, the EU's internal market commissioner, said in a speech on November 7. "Think of newspaper publishers who see the content they produce being used by others to attract consumers on the net and generate advertising revenues."
French newspapers and magazines want Google to pay them for linking to their articles on Google. The French government has named a mediator to negotiate with the press and Google to try to get a deal by the end of the year.
If no deal emerges, President Francois Hollande's government will ask parliament to draft a law modifying copyright laws to protect the press from appropriation of its content online, according to a letter signed by two ministers on November 28.
(Additional reporting by Harro ten Wolde in Frankfurt, Claire Davenbport in Brussels and Leila Abboud in Paris; Writing by Madeline Chambers, Editing by Gareth Jones and)
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U.S. for-profit colleges spend big on marketing while slashing other costs
(Reuters) - Google's biggest advertiser is neither a bank nor a retailer.
It's the for-profit University of Phoenix, which has recently been spending nearly $400,000 a day on ads, more than any financial firm or retailer, the traditional big spenders on online advertising, according to search analytics firm SpyFu.
That kind of spending may seem surprising coming from a college, but marketing has become vital for the university and its for-profit rivals as enrollments plummet and they fight back against a host of criticisms, including low job-placement rates.
Colleges such as University of Phoenix, the industry leader owned by Apollo Group Inc, will not only have to boost enrollments to reverse their fortunes, analysts say. They will also need to consider cutting tuition fees as well as continue to slash costs and take market share from rivals.
'I have witnessed several versions of this cycle but none as extreme as this,' said Trace Urdan, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, who has been covering the U.S. for-profit education industry for about 15 years.
'We are going to see more pointed efforts at marketing and more price competition in an effort to try to capture more market share both from each other as well as from traditional schools,' Urdan said.
Operators of other for-profit colleges, whose ranks include the Washington Post Co's Kaplan business, DeVry Inc and ITT Educational Services Inc, are also boosting their spending on marketing and are among the 25 biggest advertisers on Google.
But no one is spending like the University of Phoenix, which doubled its spending on Google ads to about $380,000 per day on average between October 12 and November 12, compared with $170,000 a day in the previous month, according to SpyFu.
Increased marketing alone will not be enough to fatten fast-shrinking profit margins and increase enrollments, however. Lower tuition fees and increased specialization of the type of programs offered, along with further streamlining of operations, will also be necessary, analysts say.
Industry bellwether University of Phoenix, which offers courses at about 230 campuses as well as online, announced plans last month to shut about half its locations and cut 800 jobs in order to save about $300 million a year by 2014.
New enrollments in the Apollo system are down nearly 50 percent in the past two years. As of August 31, enrollment totaled about 328,000.
Career Education Corp, which owns American InterContinental University and the Le Cordon Bleu colleges, and Lincoln Educational Services Corp have also announced closures.
LOW-COST MODEL
The $25 billion industry, which typically serves adults looking for a career change or a program to enhance job skills, is reeling after government investigations revealed fraud related to financial aid, worryingly high student debt loads and low rates of graduation and job placement.
'Many for-profit colleges make decisions that prioritize their bottom line, even when those decisions limit their students' opportunities for academic success,' a U.S. Senate report said earlier this year.
Tuition fees, and therefore profits, is one area under pressure as potential students need to be convinced to take out loans in an uncertain job market.
Apollo, whose stock has lost about 65 percent of its value this year, implemented a tuition freeze earlier this year and promised students it will not increase prices through the course of their programs.
Apollo is also looking at different cost models, with a view to serving segments of the population that it cannot serve with current University of Phoenix tuition prices.
'We have certainly seen a lot more competition at the lower end of the price scale, and that's something we are focusing on,' Apollo spokesman Mark Brennar said, while declining to offer specifics.
Wells Fargo's Urdan said it is likely that Apollo wants to compete in the low-cost end of the market by building a second brand, which it would likely do by acquiring another college rather than starting from scratch.
As colleges lower their revenue base by cutting tuition fees even as they spend more on marketing, lower margins could become the norm, analysts say. That has spooked investors already worried about sliding enrollments.
The S&P 1500 Education Services index has lost three-quarters of its value since April 2010, including a 50 percent decline in 2012.
Some for-profit colleges already differentiate themselves in the crowded higher-education market by offering programs in a particular field or by targeting students of a particular background, and that trend could accelerate.
American Public Education, for example, is known for enrolling those who work in the military and public services, while Universal Technical Institute offers programs related to the automotive industry.
For-profit colleges play up their links to employers to attract students who may otherwise opt for traditional or community colleges, said Rob Lytle, head of the education practice at advisory firm Parthenon Group.
'They are about getting people workforce employability skills, and I think they are going to be focusing tighter on that,' said Lytle.
(Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi in Bangalore; Editing by Ted Kerr)
This news article is brought to you by GAMING NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
It's the for-profit University of Phoenix, which has recently been spending nearly $400,000 a day on ads, more than any financial firm or retailer, the traditional big spenders on online advertising, according to search analytics firm SpyFu.
That kind of spending may seem surprising coming from a college, but marketing has become vital for the university and its for-profit rivals as enrollments plummet and they fight back against a host of criticisms, including low job-placement rates.
Colleges such as University of Phoenix, the industry leader owned by Apollo Group Inc, will not only have to boost enrollments to reverse their fortunes, analysts say. They will also need to consider cutting tuition fees as well as continue to slash costs and take market share from rivals.
'I have witnessed several versions of this cycle but none as extreme as this,' said Trace Urdan, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, who has been covering the U.S. for-profit education industry for about 15 years.
'We are going to see more pointed efforts at marketing and more price competition in an effort to try to capture more market share both from each other as well as from traditional schools,' Urdan said.
Operators of other for-profit colleges, whose ranks include the Washington Post Co's Kaplan business, DeVry Inc and ITT Educational Services Inc, are also boosting their spending on marketing and are among the 25 biggest advertisers on Google.
But no one is spending like the University of Phoenix, which doubled its spending on Google ads to about $380,000 per day on average between October 12 and November 12, compared with $170,000 a day in the previous month, according to SpyFu.
Increased marketing alone will not be enough to fatten fast-shrinking profit margins and increase enrollments, however. Lower tuition fees and increased specialization of the type of programs offered, along with further streamlining of operations, will also be necessary, analysts say.
Industry bellwether University of Phoenix, which offers courses at about 230 campuses as well as online, announced plans last month to shut about half its locations and cut 800 jobs in order to save about $300 million a year by 2014.
New enrollments in the Apollo system are down nearly 50 percent in the past two years. As of August 31, enrollment totaled about 328,000.
Career Education Corp, which owns American InterContinental University and the Le Cordon Bleu colleges, and Lincoln Educational Services Corp have also announced closures.
LOW-COST MODEL
The $25 billion industry, which typically serves adults looking for a career change or a program to enhance job skills, is reeling after government investigations revealed fraud related to financial aid, worryingly high student debt loads and low rates of graduation and job placement.
'Many for-profit colleges make decisions that prioritize their bottom line, even when those decisions limit their students' opportunities for academic success,' a U.S. Senate report said earlier this year.
Tuition fees, and therefore profits, is one area under pressure as potential students need to be convinced to take out loans in an uncertain job market.
Apollo, whose stock has lost about 65 percent of its value this year, implemented a tuition freeze earlier this year and promised students it will not increase prices through the course of their programs.
Apollo is also looking at different cost models, with a view to serving segments of the population that it cannot serve with current University of Phoenix tuition prices.
'We have certainly seen a lot more competition at the lower end of the price scale, and that's something we are focusing on,' Apollo spokesman Mark Brennar said, while declining to offer specifics.
Wells Fargo's Urdan said it is likely that Apollo wants to compete in the low-cost end of the market by building a second brand, which it would likely do by acquiring another college rather than starting from scratch.
As colleges lower their revenue base by cutting tuition fees even as they spend more on marketing, lower margins could become the norm, analysts say. That has spooked investors already worried about sliding enrollments.
The S&P 1500 Education Services index has lost three-quarters of its value since April 2010, including a 50 percent decline in 2012.
Some for-profit colleges already differentiate themselves in the crowded higher-education market by offering programs in a particular field or by targeting students of a particular background, and that trend could accelerate.
American Public Education, for example, is known for enrolling those who work in the military and public services, while Universal Technical Institute offers programs related to the automotive industry.
For-profit colleges play up their links to employers to attract students who may otherwise opt for traditional or community colleges, said Rob Lytle, head of the education practice at advisory firm Parthenon Group.
'They are about getting people workforce employability skills, and I think they are going to be focusing tighter on that,' said Lytle.
(Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi in Bangalore; Editing by Ted Kerr)
This news article is brought to you by GAMING NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
U.N. atom agency says stolen information on hacker site
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday information stolen from one of its former servers had been posted on a hacker website and it was taking 'all possible steps' to ensure its computer systems and data were protected.
The stolen information was contained in a statement by a group with an Iranian-sounding name calling for an inquiry into Israel's nuclear activities. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is investigating Iran's nuclear program.
The IAEA said the theft concerned 'some contact details related to experts working' with the Vienna-based agency but it did not say who might have been behind the action.
A Western diplomat said the stolen data was not believed to include information related to confidential work carried out by the IAEA. One of the agency's tasks is preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
The statement posted in the name of Parastoo (which in Farsi means swallow, the bird, and can also be a woman's name) included a large number of email addresses and called for the people to whom they belonged to sign a petition for an 'open' IAEA investigation into Israel's Dimona reactor.
The statement dated November 25 and headlined 'Parastoo Hacks IAEA' said: 'Israel owns a practical nuclear arsenal, tied to a growing military body.'
Israel is widely believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal but neither confirms nor denies this under a 'strategic ambiguity' policy to deter Arab and Iranian foes.
The country is outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty that would require it to forswear nuclear weapons and open up its reactor in the southern desert town of Dimona.
Israel and the United States accuse Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability, a charge Tehran denies, and says the Islamic state is the main proliferation threat.
Iran and Arab states say Israel's assumed atomic arsenal threatens peace and security in the Middle East.
IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said the agency 'deeply regrets this publication of information stolen from an old server that was shut down some time ago'.
Measures had been taken to address concern over possible vulnerability in the server, she said.
'The IAEA's technical and security teams are continuing to analyze the situation and do everything possible to help ensure that no further information is vulnerable,' Tudor said.
(Refiles to clarify translation of Farsi word Parastoo, paragraph 5)
(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl; Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich; Editing by Robert Woodward)
This article is brought to you by CHEAP COMPUTERS.
The stolen information was contained in a statement by a group with an Iranian-sounding name calling for an inquiry into Israel's nuclear activities. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is investigating Iran's nuclear program.
The IAEA said the theft concerned 'some contact details related to experts working' with the Vienna-based agency but it did not say who might have been behind the action.
A Western diplomat said the stolen data was not believed to include information related to confidential work carried out by the IAEA. One of the agency's tasks is preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
The statement posted in the name of Parastoo (which in Farsi means swallow, the bird, and can also be a woman's name) included a large number of email addresses and called for the people to whom they belonged to sign a petition for an 'open' IAEA investigation into Israel's Dimona reactor.
The statement dated November 25 and headlined 'Parastoo Hacks IAEA' said: 'Israel owns a practical nuclear arsenal, tied to a growing military body.'
Israel is widely believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal but neither confirms nor denies this under a 'strategic ambiguity' policy to deter Arab and Iranian foes.
The country is outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty that would require it to forswear nuclear weapons and open up its reactor in the southern desert town of Dimona.
Israel and the United States accuse Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability, a charge Tehran denies, and says the Islamic state is the main proliferation threat.
Iran and Arab states say Israel's assumed atomic arsenal threatens peace and security in the Middle East.
IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said the agency 'deeply regrets this publication of information stolen from an old server that was shut down some time ago'.
Measures had been taken to address concern over possible vulnerability in the server, she said.
'The IAEA's technical and security teams are continuing to analyze the situation and do everything possible to help ensure that no further information is vulnerable,' Tudor said.
(Refiles to clarify translation of Farsi word Parastoo, paragraph 5)
(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl; Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich; Editing by Robert Woodward)
This article is brought to you by CHEAP COMPUTERS.
Bitter struggle over Internet regulation to dominate global summit
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An unprecedented debate over how the global Internet is governed is set to dominate a meeting of officials in Dubai next week, with many countries pushing to give a United Nations body broad regulatory powers even as the United States and others contend such a move could mean the end of the open Internet.
The 12-day conference of the International Telecommunications Union, a 147-year-old organization that's now an arm of the United Nations, largely pits revenue-seeking developing countries and authoritarian regimes that want more control over Internet content against U.S. policymakers and private Net companies that prefer the status quo.
Many of the proposals have drawn fury from free-speech and human-rights advocates and have prompted resolutions from the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament, calling for the current decentralized system of governance to remain in place.
While specifics of some of the most contentious proposals remain secret, leaked drafts show that Russia is seeking rules giving individual countries broad permission to shape the content and structure of the Internet within their borders, while a group of Arab countries is advocating universal identification of Internet users. Some developing countries and telecom providers, meanwhile, want to make content providers pay for Internet transmission.
Fundamentally, most of the 193 countries in the ITU seem eager to enshrine the idea that the U.N. agency, rather than today's hodgepodge of private companies and nonprofit groups, should govern the Internet. They say that a new regime is needed to deal with the surge in cybercrime and more recent military attacks.
The ITU meeting, which aims to update a longstanding treaty on how telecom companies interact across borders, will also tackle other topics such as extending wireless coverage into rural areas.
If a majority of the ITU countries approve U.N. dominion over the Internet along with onerous rules, a backlash could lead to battles in Western countries over whether to ratify the treaty, with tech companies rallying ordinary Internet users against it and some telecom carriers supporting it.
In fact, dozens of countries including China, Russia and some Arab states, already restrict Internet access within their own borders. Those governments would have greater leverage over Internet content and service providers if the changes were backed up by international agreement.
Amid the escalating rhetoric, search king Google last week asked users to 'pledge your support for the free and open Internet' on social media, raising the specter of a grassroots outpouring of the sort that blocked American copyright legislation and a global anti-piracy treaty earlier this year.
Google's Vint Cerf, the ordinarily diplomatic co-author of the basic protocol for Internet data, denounced the proposed new rules as hopeless efforts by some governments and state-controlled telecom authorities to assert their power.
'These persistent attempts are just evidence that this breed of dinosaurs, with their pea-sized brains, hasn't figured out that they are dead yet, because the signal hasn't traveled up their long necks,' Cerf told Reuters.
The ITU's top official, Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré, sought to downplay the concerns in a separate interview, stressing to Reuters that even though updates to the treaty could be approved by a simple majority, in practice nothing will be adopted without near-unanimity.
'Voting means winners and losers. We can't afford that in the ITU,' said Touré, a former satellite engineer from Mali who was educated in Russia.
Touré predicted that only 'light-touch' regulation on cyber-security will emerge by 'consensus', using a deliberately vague term that implies something between a majority and unanimity.
He rejected criticism that the ITU's historic role in coordinating phone carriers leaves it unfit to corral the unruly Internet, comparing the Web to a transportation system.
'Because you own the roads, you don't own the cars and especially not the goods they are transporting. But when you buy a car you don't buy the road,' Touré said. 'You need to know the number of cars and their size and weight so you can build the bridges and set the right number of lanes. You need light-touch regulation to set down a few traffic lights.'
Because the proposals from Russia, China and others are more extreme, Touré has been able to cast mild regulation as a compromise accommodating nearly everyone.
Two leaked Russian proposals say nations should have the sovereign right 'to regulate the national Internet segment'. An August draft proposal from a group of 17 Arab countries called for transmission recipients to receive 'identity information' about the senders, potentially endangering the anonymity of political dissidents, among others.
A U.S. State Department envoy to the gathering and Cerf agreed with Touré that there is unlikely to be any drastic change emerging from Dubai.
'The decisions are going to be by consensus,' said U.S. delegation chief Terry Kramer. He said anti-anonymity measures such as mandatory Internet address tracing won't be adopted because of opposition by the United States and others.
'We're a strong voice, given a lot of the heritage,' Kramer said, referring to the United States' role in the development of the Internet. 'A lot of European markets are very similar, and a lot of Asian counties are supportive, except China.'
Despite the reassuring words, a fresh leak over the weekend showed that the ITU's top managers viewed a badly split conference as a realistic prospect less than three months ago.
The leaked program for a 'senior management retreat' for the ITU in early September included a summary discussion of the most probable outcomes from Dubai, concluding that the two likeliest scenarios involved major reworkings of the treaty that the United States would then refuse to sign. The only difference between the scenarios lay in how many other developed countries sided with the Americans.
An ITU spokesman said Tuesday that 'the management team has never doubted that consensus will be found' and that the scenarios were meant to aid efforts at facilitating the process.
Touré said that because the disagreements are so vast, the conference probably will end up with something resembling the ITU's earlier formula for trying to protect children online - an agreement to cooperate more and share laws and best practices, perhaps with hotlines to head off misunderstandings.
'From Dubai, what I personally expect is to see some kind of principles saying cyberspace is a global phenomenon and it can only have global responses,' Touré said. 'I just intend to put down some key principles there that will lay the seeds for something in the future.'
Even vague terms could be used as a pretext for more oppressive policies in various countries, though, and activists and industry leaders fear those countries might also band together by region to offer very different Internet experiences.
In some ways, the U.N. involvement reflects a reversal that has already begun.
The United States has steadily diminished its official role in Internet governance, and many nations have stepped up their filtering and surveillance. More than 40 countries now filter the Net that their citizens see, said Ronald Deibert, a University of Toronto political science professor and authority on international conflicts in cyberspace.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said this month that the Net is already on the road to Balkanization, with people in different countries getting very different experiences from the services provided by Google, Skype and others.
This month, a new law in Russia took effect that allows the federal government to order a Website offline without a court hearing. Iran recently rolled out a version of the Internet that replaced the real thing within its borders. A growing number of countries, including China and India, order sites to censor themselves for political, religious and other content.
China, which has the world's largest number of Internet users, also blocks access to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter among other sites within its borders.
The loose governance of the Net currently depends on the non-profit ICANN, which oversees the Web's address system, along with voluntary standard-setting bodies and a patchwork of national laws and regional agreements. Many countries see it as a U.S.-dominated system.
The U.S. isolation within the ITU is exacerbated by it being home to many of the biggest technology companies - and by the fact that it could have military reasons for wanting to preserve online anonymity. The Internet emerged as a critical military domain with the 2010 discovery of Stuxnet, a computer worm developed at least in part by the United States that attacked Iran's nuclear program.
Whatever the outcome in Dubai, the conference stands a good chance of becoming a historic turning point for the Internet.
'I see this as a constitutional moment for global cyberspace, where we can stand back and say, `Who should be in charge?' said Deibert. 'What are the rules of the road?'
(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Martin Howell, Ken Wills and Andrew Hay)
This news article is brought to you by SEXUAL HEALTH NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
The 12-day conference of the International Telecommunications Union, a 147-year-old organization that's now an arm of the United Nations, largely pits revenue-seeking developing countries and authoritarian regimes that want more control over Internet content against U.S. policymakers and private Net companies that prefer the status quo.
Many of the proposals have drawn fury from free-speech and human-rights advocates and have prompted resolutions from the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament, calling for the current decentralized system of governance to remain in place.
While specifics of some of the most contentious proposals remain secret, leaked drafts show that Russia is seeking rules giving individual countries broad permission to shape the content and structure of the Internet within their borders, while a group of Arab countries is advocating universal identification of Internet users. Some developing countries and telecom providers, meanwhile, want to make content providers pay for Internet transmission.
Fundamentally, most of the 193 countries in the ITU seem eager to enshrine the idea that the U.N. agency, rather than today's hodgepodge of private companies and nonprofit groups, should govern the Internet. They say that a new regime is needed to deal with the surge in cybercrime and more recent military attacks.
The ITU meeting, which aims to update a longstanding treaty on how telecom companies interact across borders, will also tackle other topics such as extending wireless coverage into rural areas.
If a majority of the ITU countries approve U.N. dominion over the Internet along with onerous rules, a backlash could lead to battles in Western countries over whether to ratify the treaty, with tech companies rallying ordinary Internet users against it and some telecom carriers supporting it.
In fact, dozens of countries including China, Russia and some Arab states, already restrict Internet access within their own borders. Those governments would have greater leverage over Internet content and service providers if the changes were backed up by international agreement.
Amid the escalating rhetoric, search king Google last week asked users to 'pledge your support for the free and open Internet' on social media, raising the specter of a grassroots outpouring of the sort that blocked American copyright legislation and a global anti-piracy treaty earlier this year.
Google's Vint Cerf, the ordinarily diplomatic co-author of the basic protocol for Internet data, denounced the proposed new rules as hopeless efforts by some governments and state-controlled telecom authorities to assert their power.
'These persistent attempts are just evidence that this breed of dinosaurs, with their pea-sized brains, hasn't figured out that they are dead yet, because the signal hasn't traveled up their long necks,' Cerf told Reuters.
The ITU's top official, Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré, sought to downplay the concerns in a separate interview, stressing to Reuters that even though updates to the treaty could be approved by a simple majority, in practice nothing will be adopted without near-unanimity.
'Voting means winners and losers. We can't afford that in the ITU,' said Touré, a former satellite engineer from Mali who was educated in Russia.
Touré predicted that only 'light-touch' regulation on cyber-security will emerge by 'consensus', using a deliberately vague term that implies something between a majority and unanimity.
He rejected criticism that the ITU's historic role in coordinating phone carriers leaves it unfit to corral the unruly Internet, comparing the Web to a transportation system.
'Because you own the roads, you don't own the cars and especially not the goods they are transporting. But when you buy a car you don't buy the road,' Touré said. 'You need to know the number of cars and their size and weight so you can build the bridges and set the right number of lanes. You need light-touch regulation to set down a few traffic lights.'
Because the proposals from Russia, China and others are more extreme, Touré has been able to cast mild regulation as a compromise accommodating nearly everyone.
Two leaked Russian proposals say nations should have the sovereign right 'to regulate the national Internet segment'. An August draft proposal from a group of 17 Arab countries called for transmission recipients to receive 'identity information' about the senders, potentially endangering the anonymity of political dissidents, among others.
A U.S. State Department envoy to the gathering and Cerf agreed with Touré that there is unlikely to be any drastic change emerging from Dubai.
'The decisions are going to be by consensus,' said U.S. delegation chief Terry Kramer. He said anti-anonymity measures such as mandatory Internet address tracing won't be adopted because of opposition by the United States and others.
'We're a strong voice, given a lot of the heritage,' Kramer said, referring to the United States' role in the development of the Internet. 'A lot of European markets are very similar, and a lot of Asian counties are supportive, except China.'
Despite the reassuring words, a fresh leak over the weekend showed that the ITU's top managers viewed a badly split conference as a realistic prospect less than three months ago.
The leaked program for a 'senior management retreat' for the ITU in early September included a summary discussion of the most probable outcomes from Dubai, concluding that the two likeliest scenarios involved major reworkings of the treaty that the United States would then refuse to sign. The only difference between the scenarios lay in how many other developed countries sided with the Americans.
An ITU spokesman said Tuesday that 'the management team has never doubted that consensus will be found' and that the scenarios were meant to aid efforts at facilitating the process.
Touré said that because the disagreements are so vast, the conference probably will end up with something resembling the ITU's earlier formula for trying to protect children online - an agreement to cooperate more and share laws and best practices, perhaps with hotlines to head off misunderstandings.
'From Dubai, what I personally expect is to see some kind of principles saying cyberspace is a global phenomenon and it can only have global responses,' Touré said. 'I just intend to put down some key principles there that will lay the seeds for something in the future.'
Even vague terms could be used as a pretext for more oppressive policies in various countries, though, and activists and industry leaders fear those countries might also band together by region to offer very different Internet experiences.
In some ways, the U.N. involvement reflects a reversal that has already begun.
The United States has steadily diminished its official role in Internet governance, and many nations have stepped up their filtering and surveillance. More than 40 countries now filter the Net that their citizens see, said Ronald Deibert, a University of Toronto political science professor and authority on international conflicts in cyberspace.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said this month that the Net is already on the road to Balkanization, with people in different countries getting very different experiences from the services provided by Google, Skype and others.
This month, a new law in Russia took effect that allows the federal government to order a Website offline without a court hearing. Iran recently rolled out a version of the Internet that replaced the real thing within its borders. A growing number of countries, including China and India, order sites to censor themselves for political, religious and other content.
China, which has the world's largest number of Internet users, also blocks access to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter among other sites within its borders.
The loose governance of the Net currently depends on the non-profit ICANN, which oversees the Web's address system, along with voluntary standard-setting bodies and a patchwork of national laws and regional agreements. Many countries see it as a U.S.-dominated system.
The U.S. isolation within the ITU is exacerbated by it being home to many of the biggest technology companies - and by the fact that it could have military reasons for wanting to preserve online anonymity. The Internet emerged as a critical military domain with the 2010 discovery of Stuxnet, a computer worm developed at least in part by the United States that attacked Iran's nuclear program.
Whatever the outcome in Dubai, the conference stands a good chance of becoming a historic turning point for the Internet.
'I see this as a constitutional moment for global cyberspace, where we can stand back and say, `Who should be in charge?' said Deibert. 'What are the rules of the road?'
(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Martin Howell, Ken Wills and Andrew Hay)
This news article is brought to you by SEXUAL HEALTH NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Card firms' block on WikiLeaks did not break rules: EU
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A block on processing donations for WikiLeaks by Visa Europe and other credit card companies is unlikely to have violated EU anti-trust rules, the European Commission said on Tuesday.
DataCell, a company that collected donations for WikiLeaks, complained to the Commission about Visa Europe, MasterCard Europe and American Express Co after they stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks in December 2010. Their decisions followed criticism by the United States of WikiLeaks' release of thousands of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables.
'On the basis of the information available, the Commission considers that the complaint does not merit further investigation because it is unlikely that any infringement of EU competition rules could be established,' said a spokesman for the Commission, the EU executive.
He added, however, that the Commission would look at new information from DataCell before taking a final decision.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been staying in Ecuador's embassy in central London since June to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations.
Assange said there were no lawful grounds for the card companies' actions, which he said had cost Wikileaks 95 percent of its revenue and threatened his organization's existence.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee and Adrian Croft; Editing by Louise Heavens)
This article is brought to you by COMPUTERS FOR SALE.
DataCell, a company that collected donations for WikiLeaks, complained to the Commission about Visa Europe, MasterCard Europe and American Express Co after they stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks in December 2010. Their decisions followed criticism by the United States of WikiLeaks' release of thousands of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables.
'On the basis of the information available, the Commission considers that the complaint does not merit further investigation because it is unlikely that any infringement of EU competition rules could be established,' said a spokesman for the Commission, the EU executive.
He added, however, that the Commission would look at new information from DataCell before taking a final decision.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been staying in Ecuador's embassy in central London since June to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations.
Assange said there were no lawful grounds for the card companies' actions, which he said had cost Wikileaks 95 percent of its revenue and threatened his organization's existence.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee and Adrian Croft; Editing by Louise Heavens)
This article is brought to you by COMPUTERS FOR SALE.
Monday, November 26, 2012
ChannelAdvisor says eBay sales up 57 percent early on Cyber Monday
(Reuters) - ChannelAdvisor said client sales on eBay Inc's online marketplace jumped 57 percent from a year before early on Cyber Monday.
The sales growth rate was five times higher than during the same period last year, said ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more on websites including Amazon.com Inc and eBay.com.
Client sales on Amazon.com were up 52 percent during the first part of Cyber Monday, ChannelAdvisor also reported.
(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
This article is brought to you by CHEAP COMPUTERS.
The sales growth rate was five times higher than during the same period last year, said ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more on websites including Amazon.com Inc and eBay.com.
Client sales on Amazon.com were up 52 percent during the first part of Cyber Monday, ChannelAdvisor also reported.
(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
This article is brought to you by CHEAP COMPUTERS.
Trade groups hit airwaves to protect tax benefits
NEW YORK (Reuters) - As the debate around tax reform grows more heated, broker-dealers and other companies that service retirement plans offered by employers are increasingly concerned that the tax benefits of 401(k) plans are on the chopping block.
Groups representing the spectrum of financial services have begun marketing campaigns online as well as on television protect their members' interests and bring investors to their side.
An industry group that normally works behind the scenes, the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries, on Monday began an advertising campaign aimed at U.S. workers to let them know the federal government might lower the cap on how much they could contribute to their retirement plans on a tax deferred basis.
That worries ASPPA because Americans might end up saving less, and some smaller employers might eventually decide to discontinue their own 401(k) plans.
The 'Save My 401(k)' campaign includes a website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, and an online videogame. ASPPA's Chief Executive Brian Graff declined to disclose the ad campaign's budget, but did say it was in the six figures.
The ad campaign's goal is to raise awareness among employers and employees that they may be in danger of losing some of the tax breaks surrounding their 401(k) plans, Graff said.
But efforts by ASPPA and others may backfire if people view the campaigns as an extension of the negative advertising campaign that took place in the months leading up to the presidential election on November 6
Roberto Rigobon, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Business said investors may the advertisements 'more as polarized political discussion than feel roused to call their senators.'
The possible year-end expiration of a host of tax provisions has industry trade groups trying to protect their interests and maintain the advantages their products or services have. Full-scale tax reform could cut or limit specific tax breaks as a way of lowering overall tax rates.
'The last time Congress made major changes to the tax code, there was a drop in 401(k) contributions by more than 70 percent,' Graff said in a phone interview.
POTENTIAL HITS
For nearly every proposed tax change, there appears to be an ad campaign targeted at investors being urged to write their congressional representatives.
Life insurance benefits are not taxed at the moment and the Americans to Protect Family Security, a consortium of insurance industry groups, wants to keep it that way.
This month the Americans to Protect Family Security, which includes the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), a trade group made up of 300 insurance companies, began promoting the importance of life insurance products for U.S. families. The ads, including television spots during the Sunday morning news programs 'Meet the Press' and 'Face the Nation,' as well as online ads, focus on how life insurance helps families.
Jack Dolan, a spokesman for ACLI, said now is the time to get a message across via television and the Internet. 'This is a critical time and it is also a time when people are paying attention,' said Dolan, adding that 75 million families have life insurance.
Similarly, The Alliance for Savings and Investment (ASI), a coalition of dividend-paying companies, investor organizations and trade associations, along with the Edison Electric Institute and the American Gas Association, have begun the 'Defend My Dividend' advertising campaign. ASI's efforts also include print ads that advocate maintaining the lower tax rate for dividend income.
Dividends are currently taxed at 15 percent, but that rate is set to expire at the end of the year. Dividends could then be taxed at a rate as high as 39.6 percent if an extension is not made or a compromise not reached.
As for ASPPA's concerns, investors who save via 401(k) plans do so on a tax-deferred basis, paying no taxes on the money until they withdraw it from the plan.
Through its 'Save My 401(k)' campaign, ASPPA members - including brokerage firms such as UBS AG and Bank of America Merrill Lynch - will try to encourage clients to contact their representative and urge them to leave 401(k) plans out of tax reform.
ASPPA has 11,000 member companies, including broker-dealers and record keepers who service the retirement savings plans offered by U.S. employers. The group's goal is to have a total of 250,000 emails sent to members of Congress over the next six months, Graff said.
'We have never done anything close to this scale,' he said.
(Editing by Matthew Lewis, Jennifer Merritt and Leslie Gevirtz)
This article is brought to you by AFFORDABLE COMPUTERS.
Groups representing the spectrum of financial services have begun marketing campaigns online as well as on television protect their members' interests and bring investors to their side.
An industry group that normally works behind the scenes, the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries, on Monday began an advertising campaign aimed at U.S. workers to let them know the federal government might lower the cap on how much they could contribute to their retirement plans on a tax deferred basis.
That worries ASPPA because Americans might end up saving less, and some smaller employers might eventually decide to discontinue their own 401(k) plans.
The 'Save My 401(k)' campaign includes a website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, and an online videogame. ASPPA's Chief Executive Brian Graff declined to disclose the ad campaign's budget, but did say it was in the six figures.
The ad campaign's goal is to raise awareness among employers and employees that they may be in danger of losing some of the tax breaks surrounding their 401(k) plans, Graff said.
But efforts by ASPPA and others may backfire if people view the campaigns as an extension of the negative advertising campaign that took place in the months leading up to the presidential election on November 6
Roberto Rigobon, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Business said investors may the advertisements 'more as polarized political discussion than feel roused to call their senators.'
The possible year-end expiration of a host of tax provisions has industry trade groups trying to protect their interests and maintain the advantages their products or services have. Full-scale tax reform could cut or limit specific tax breaks as a way of lowering overall tax rates.
'The last time Congress made major changes to the tax code, there was a drop in 401(k) contributions by more than 70 percent,' Graff said in a phone interview.
POTENTIAL HITS
For nearly every proposed tax change, there appears to be an ad campaign targeted at investors being urged to write their congressional representatives.
Life insurance benefits are not taxed at the moment and the Americans to Protect Family Security, a consortium of insurance industry groups, wants to keep it that way.
This month the Americans to Protect Family Security, which includes the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), a trade group made up of 300 insurance companies, began promoting the importance of life insurance products for U.S. families. The ads, including television spots during the Sunday morning news programs 'Meet the Press' and 'Face the Nation,' as well as online ads, focus on how life insurance helps families.
Jack Dolan, a spokesman for ACLI, said now is the time to get a message across via television and the Internet. 'This is a critical time and it is also a time when people are paying attention,' said Dolan, adding that 75 million families have life insurance.
Similarly, The Alliance for Savings and Investment (ASI), a coalition of dividend-paying companies, investor organizations and trade associations, along with the Edison Electric Institute and the American Gas Association, have begun the 'Defend My Dividend' advertising campaign. ASI's efforts also include print ads that advocate maintaining the lower tax rate for dividend income.
Dividends are currently taxed at 15 percent, but that rate is set to expire at the end of the year. Dividends could then be taxed at a rate as high as 39.6 percent if an extension is not made or a compromise not reached.
As for ASPPA's concerns, investors who save via 401(k) plans do so on a tax-deferred basis, paying no taxes on the money until they withdraw it from the plan.
Through its 'Save My 401(k)' campaign, ASPPA members - including brokerage firms such as UBS AG and Bank of America Merrill Lynch - will try to encourage clients to contact their representative and urge them to leave 401(k) plans out of tax reform.
ASPPA has 11,000 member companies, including broker-dealers and record keepers who service the retirement savings plans offered by U.S. employers. The group's goal is to have a total of 250,000 emails sent to members of Congress over the next six months, Graff said.
'We have never done anything close to this scale,' he said.
(Editing by Matthew Lewis, Jennifer Merritt and Leslie Gevirtz)
This article is brought to you by AFFORDABLE COMPUTERS.
Online sales jump on Cyber Monday, eBay shines
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Cyber Monday's online sales got off to a brisk start, sending e-commerce retailers' shares higher and suggesting strong growth from earlier in the holiday shopping season would continue through December.
Sales on eBay Inc's online marketplace were particularly strong and Amazon.com Inc continued its rapid holiday shopping season growth, according to early Cyber Monday data released by e-commerce firm ChannelAdvisor.
EBay's shares climbed about 5 percent to $51.50, a new multi-year high, in afternoon trading. Amazon's shares gained 1 percent to $242.26.
Cyber Monday has been the biggest online shopping day in recent years, as workers return to offices and use computers to make holiday purchases. ComScore expects online sales to hit a record of about $1.5 billion by day's end.
Online sales rose 24.1 percent as of noon EST on Monday, compared with the same period a year ago, according to International Business Machines Corp, which tracks transaction data from 500 U.S. retail websites. In 2011, the early Cyber Monday year-over-year growth was 15 percent, IBM said.
Strong online sales growth on Thanksgiving Day and 'Black Friday' sparked concern that shoppers were just buying earlier, threatening revenue later in the season.
'So far that is not the case,' said Jay Henderson, the strategy director for IBM Smarter Commerce. 'Extending the shopping season has really just fueled additional online spending rather than cannibalizing days later in the season.'
ChannelAdvisor said client sales - or sales generated by third-party merchants using the company's software and services - soared 57 percent on eBay.com early on Monday, compared with the same period in 2011.
The sales growth rate was five times higher than during the same period last year, said ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more online.
'The early eBay numbers are impressive,' said R.J. Hottovy, an equity analyst at Morningstar. 'They put together an effective marketing plan across several channels this holiday season - online, television and print.'
EBay has been trying to move away from its online auction roots, emphasizing new items selling at fixed prices to better compete with Amazon.
'The numbers suggest they're having success reintroducing consumers to the 'new eBay,'' Hottovy said.
Client sales on Amazon.com were up 52 percent during the first part of Cyber Monday, ChannelAdvisor also reported.
'Amazon continues to look impressive to us since it is building on top large numbers,' said Scott Tilghman, an analyst at Caris & Company.
(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)
This news article is brought to you by SPACE AND ASTRONOMY NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Sales on eBay Inc's online marketplace were particularly strong and Amazon.com Inc continued its rapid holiday shopping season growth, according to early Cyber Monday data released by e-commerce firm ChannelAdvisor.
EBay's shares climbed about 5 percent to $51.50, a new multi-year high, in afternoon trading. Amazon's shares gained 1 percent to $242.26.
Cyber Monday has been the biggest online shopping day in recent years, as workers return to offices and use computers to make holiday purchases. ComScore expects online sales to hit a record of about $1.5 billion by day's end.
Online sales rose 24.1 percent as of noon EST on Monday, compared with the same period a year ago, according to International Business Machines Corp, which tracks transaction data from 500 U.S. retail websites. In 2011, the early Cyber Monday year-over-year growth was 15 percent, IBM said.
Strong online sales growth on Thanksgiving Day and 'Black Friday' sparked concern that shoppers were just buying earlier, threatening revenue later in the season.
'So far that is not the case,' said Jay Henderson, the strategy director for IBM Smarter Commerce. 'Extending the shopping season has really just fueled additional online spending rather than cannibalizing days later in the season.'
ChannelAdvisor said client sales - or sales generated by third-party merchants using the company's software and services - soared 57 percent on eBay.com early on Monday, compared with the same period in 2011.
The sales growth rate was five times higher than during the same period last year, said ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more online.
'The early eBay numbers are impressive,' said R.J. Hottovy, an equity analyst at Morningstar. 'They put together an effective marketing plan across several channels this holiday season - online, television and print.'
EBay has been trying to move away from its online auction roots, emphasizing new items selling at fixed prices to better compete with Amazon.
'The numbers suggest they're having success reintroducing consumers to the 'new eBay,'' Hottovy said.
Client sales on Amazon.com were up 52 percent during the first part of Cyber Monday, ChannelAdvisor also reported.
'Amazon continues to look impressive to us since it is building on top large numbers,' said Scott Tilghman, an analyst at Caris & Company.
(Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)
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Online sales jump 24 percent early on Cyber Monday: IBM
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Online sales jumped during the first hours of Cyber Monday suggesting strong growth from earlier in the holiday shopping season continues, according to data from International Business Machines Corp.
Online sales were up 24.1 percent as of 12:00pm EST on Cyber Monday, compared to the same period a year earlier, said IBM, which tracks transaction data from 500 U.S. retail websites. In 2011, the early Cyber Monday year-over-year growth was 15 percent, IBM noted.
Strong online sales growth on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday sparked concern that shoppers may just be buying earlier, threatening revenue later in the season.
'So far that is not the case,' said Jay Henderson, Strategy Director, IBM Smarter Commerce. 'Extending the shopping season has really just fueled additional online spending rather than cannibalizing days later in the season.'
(Reporting By Alistair Barr)
This news article is brought to you by SAVING MONEY BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Online sales were up 24.1 percent as of 12:00pm EST on Cyber Monday, compared to the same period a year earlier, said IBM, which tracks transaction data from 500 U.S. retail websites. In 2011, the early Cyber Monday year-over-year growth was 15 percent, IBM noted.
Strong online sales growth on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday sparked concern that shoppers may just be buying earlier, threatening revenue later in the season.
'So far that is not the case,' said Jay Henderson, Strategy Director, IBM Smarter Commerce. 'Extending the shopping season has really just fueled additional online spending rather than cannibalizing days later in the season.'
(Reporting By Alistair Barr)
This news article is brought to you by SAVING MONEY BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
FBI uses Twitter, social media to look for securities fraud
(Reuters) - The FBI sees social media as a potential breeding ground for securities fraud, and has agents scouring Twitter and Facebook for tips, according to two top agents overseeing a long-running investigation into insider trading in the $2 trillion hedge fund industry.
April Brooks, a special agent in charge of the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and David Chaves, a supervisory agent, said it is hard to predict the next wave of securities fraud, but they add that it will have a lot to do with advances in technology and social media.
'I will tell you technology will play a huge part, social media, Twitter. Any kind of technology that is new and doesn't exist today, if there is any way to exploit it, these individuals will exploit it,' Brooks told Reuters TV in an interview for the Reuters Investment Outlook 2013 Summit.
Brooks and Chaves oversee what the FBI calls 'Operation Perfect Hedge,' which has led to more than 60 convictions of hedge fund traders, analysts and industry consultants.
Last Tuesday, a day after the Reuters TV interview, the government charged a former employee of Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital, Mathew Martoma, with a $276 million insider trading scheme that prosecutors called 'the most lucrative' ever.
While Cohen, whose $14 billion hedge fund is one of the most successful and best known on Wall Street, was not charged with any wrongdoing, the complaint says he signed off on trades in Elan Corp and Wyeth in July 2008 ahead of bad news about a clinical drug trial the companies were working on.
Brooks and Chaves gave no hints about the SAC case in the interview, and declined to talk about active investigations.
'Some view insider trading as reaching this crescendo, and we have reached a top. I would suggest we have not,' Chaves said.
INVESTORS EMBRACE TWITTER
Hedge funds, big institutional investors and investment research firms, such as Muddy Waters (@muddywatersre), have embraced Twitter as a platform for sharing their ideas and investment strategies.
On November 20, PIMCO's Bill Gross tweeted via @PIMCO: 'Bernanke confirms PIMCO's New Normal after 3 years! 2% economic potential at least for a time. Probably lower & longer Mr. Chairman.'
Gross was referring to Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and PIMCO's portfolio positioning for what he calls a 'New Normal' developed world economy - 2.0 percent real growth and 2 percent inflation.
'People have used Twitter as a powerful distribution mechanism, occasionally with meaningful market impact,' said independent analyst Daniel Yu, who is an avid user of Twitter under the handle @LongShortTrader.
Studies and research reports have shown that Twitter can be used as an early indicator of changing investor sentiment around particular stocks and commodities. This allows Twitter data to be used to predict price fluctuations in the market.
One report, authored by academics Johan Bollen, Huina Mao and Xiao-Jun Zeng, says the degree of 'calmness' of the Twitterverse can predict - with 87.6 percent accuracy - how the Dow Jones industrial average will move two to six days ahead of time.
Some hedge funds and other investors have criticized U.S. authorities for cracking down on insider trading to distract attention from the fact that law enforcement has not been able to bring any prosecutions against Wall Street bankers over the financial crisis.
Brooks and Chaves acknowledged the criticism. They said there is a desire to prosecute, but the laws are not there to criminalize actions that some think deserve to be punished.
'I wouldn't say we have missed opportunities,' Brooks said, commenting on the 2008 financial crisis. 'There may be others who are responsible, but who don't necessarily violate the federal statutes.'
The two agents, who both work in the securities division of the New York branch of the FBI, said that when they meet with people on Wall Street, they explain there is no vendetta or campaign against the hedge fund industry. The insider trading investigation is simply part of an effort to make the markets more fair for everybody.
'The message is we are out there, and we are going to continue to be out there,' Brooks said. 'This type of violation, this type of crime impacts everyone.'
To see the Reuters TV interview with FBI agents Brooks and Chaves, click:here
(Reporting by Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Jan Paschal)
This news article is brought to you by GOING GREEN NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
April Brooks, a special agent in charge of the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and David Chaves, a supervisory agent, said it is hard to predict the next wave of securities fraud, but they add that it will have a lot to do with advances in technology and social media.
'I will tell you technology will play a huge part, social media, Twitter. Any kind of technology that is new and doesn't exist today, if there is any way to exploit it, these individuals will exploit it,' Brooks told Reuters TV in an interview for the Reuters Investment Outlook 2013 Summit.
Brooks and Chaves oversee what the FBI calls 'Operation Perfect Hedge,' which has led to more than 60 convictions of hedge fund traders, analysts and industry consultants.
Last Tuesday, a day after the Reuters TV interview, the government charged a former employee of Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital, Mathew Martoma, with a $276 million insider trading scheme that prosecutors called 'the most lucrative' ever.
While Cohen, whose $14 billion hedge fund is one of the most successful and best known on Wall Street, was not charged with any wrongdoing, the complaint says he signed off on trades in Elan Corp and Wyeth in July 2008 ahead of bad news about a clinical drug trial the companies were working on.
Brooks and Chaves gave no hints about the SAC case in the interview, and declined to talk about active investigations.
'Some view insider trading as reaching this crescendo, and we have reached a top. I would suggest we have not,' Chaves said.
INVESTORS EMBRACE TWITTER
Hedge funds, big institutional investors and investment research firms, such as Muddy Waters (@muddywatersre), have embraced Twitter as a platform for sharing their ideas and investment strategies.
On November 20, PIMCO's Bill Gross tweeted via @PIMCO: 'Bernanke confirms PIMCO's New Normal after 3 years! 2% economic potential at least for a time. Probably lower & longer Mr. Chairman.'
Gross was referring to Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and PIMCO's portfolio positioning for what he calls a 'New Normal' developed world economy - 2.0 percent real growth and 2 percent inflation.
'People have used Twitter as a powerful distribution mechanism, occasionally with meaningful market impact,' said independent analyst Daniel Yu, who is an avid user of Twitter under the handle @LongShortTrader.
Studies and research reports have shown that Twitter can be used as an early indicator of changing investor sentiment around particular stocks and commodities. This allows Twitter data to be used to predict price fluctuations in the market.
One report, authored by academics Johan Bollen, Huina Mao and Xiao-Jun Zeng, says the degree of 'calmness' of the Twitterverse can predict - with 87.6 percent accuracy - how the Dow Jones industrial average will move two to six days ahead of time.
Some hedge funds and other investors have criticized U.S. authorities for cracking down on insider trading to distract attention from the fact that law enforcement has not been able to bring any prosecutions against Wall Street bankers over the financial crisis.
Brooks and Chaves acknowledged the criticism. They said there is a desire to prosecute, but the laws are not there to criminalize actions that some think deserve to be punished.
'I wouldn't say we have missed opportunities,' Brooks said, commenting on the 2008 financial crisis. 'There may be others who are responsible, but who don't necessarily violate the federal statutes.'
The two agents, who both work in the securities division of the New York branch of the FBI, said that when they meet with people on Wall Street, they explain there is no vendetta or campaign against the hedge fund industry. The insider trading investigation is simply part of an effort to make the markets more fair for everybody.
'The message is we are out there, and we are going to continue to be out there,' Brooks said. 'This type of violation, this type of crime impacts everyone.'
To see the Reuters TV interview with FBI agents Brooks and Chaves, click:here
(Reporting by Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Jan Paschal)
This news article is brought to you by GOING GREEN NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
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