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Sunday, October 20, 2013

JPMorgan Strikes Tentative $13B Mortgages Settlement

JP Morgan Chase & Company headquarters in New York.

Emmanuel Dunand /AFP/Getty Images

JP Morgan Chase & Company headquarters in New York.

Emmanuel Dunand /AFP/Getty Images

In what would be the largest such settlement in U.S. history, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has reportedly reached a tentative deal with the Justice Department that would see the bank pay $13 billion to settle civil charges related to wrongdoing by some of its units just before and during the housing crisis.

The deal, sources tell news outlets including NPR, would not absolve JPMorgan from possible criminal liability.

Word of the tentative agreement emerged around 3 p.m. ET. Saturday. We posted when the news broke and followed with background and more details.

Our original post and subsequent updates follow. Scroll down and "read up" if you want to see how the story developed.

Update at 5 p.m. ET. Sources Tells NPR About The Tentative Deal:

Two sources familiar with the talks tells NPR Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson that the tentative agreement was reached Friday night and that the language of the deal is still being written. But the sources said the general outlines of what's been reported are correct.

Update at 4:30 p.m. ET. The Accusations:

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, as Bloomberg notes, "accused JPMorgan and its affiliates of making false statements and omitting material facts in selling $33 billion in mortgage bonds to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from Sept. 7, 2005, through Sept. 19, 2007. The regulator said executives at JPMorgan, Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns Cos., which were acquired by JPMorgan in 2008, knowingly misrepresented the quality of the loans underlying the bonds, among other things, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan."

Update at 4 p.m. ET. No Release From Criminal Liability:

"The tentative deal does not release the bank from criminal liability, a factor that had been a major sticking point in the discussions," according to Reuters' source for the story.

Update at 3:45 p.m. ET. "Moving Closer" And Some Details:

The New York Times characterizes the news this way: JPMorgan and Justice "are moving closer to a $13 billion settlement." The Times adds that:

"The bank would be expected to pay about $9 billion in fines, according to a person briefed on the negotiations. JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank, is also likely to spend $4 billion in relief for struggling homeowners, another person briefed on the talks said."

Update at 3:35 p.m. ET. Settlement Would Be A Record:

ABC News had previously noted that the settlement was expected to be the "largest-ever payment in the history of financial regulation," topping the "previous record when BP paid out $4.5 billion following criminal charges related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill." Fox Business calls it the "largest-ever settlement involving a U.S. company."

Update at 3:20 p.m. ET. Deal Reportedly Reached Friday:

According to CNBC, "Attorney General Eric Holder and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, along with two lawyers, struck the deal Friday after the market close."

Bloomberg News reports that "the settlement amount, which increased from $11 billion to $13 billion during negotiations [Friday] night, the person said, includes a $4 billion accord with the Federal Housing Finance Agency over the bank's sale of mortgage-backed securities."

3:08 p.m. ET. We're seeing multiple reports that:

— "J.P. Morgan has reached a $13 billion tentative settlement with the Justice Department." (The Wall Street Journal)

— "JPMorgan Chase has reached a $13 billion tentative deal with the Justice Department, said a person familiar with the negotiations." (CNBC)

— "JPMorgan Chase & Co. has reached a tentative resolution of all civil mortgage-related matters with the U.S. Department of Justice, a person familiar with settlement negotiations said." (Bloomberg News)

— "JPMorgan Chase & Co has reached a tentative $13 billion deal with the U.S. Justice Department to settle a range of mortgage issues, a source close to the talks said on Saturday. The settlement does not include any release from criminal liability for the bank, the source said." (Reuters)

NPR's Business Desk is working the story. We'll update as things develop.

At $13 billion, the settlement would be about $2 billion more than recent reports had predicted. As The Associated Press has written, JPMorgan had been:

"Said to be discussing an $11 billion national settlement with the Department of Justice over mortgage-backed securities. The securities lost value after a bubble in the housing market burst, helping to bring on the financial crisis."

Last month, as we wrote, the bank "agreed to acknowledge that it violated federal securities laws and [to] pay $920 million in penalties assessed by regulators in the U.S. and U.K. to settle charges related to the huge trading losses racked up by its London traders last year."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/19/237762312/reports-jpmorgan-reaches-13-billion-mortgages-settlement?ft=1&f=
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Hitches On Health Exchanges Hinder Launch Of Insurance Co-op

Maryland's Evergreen Health Co-op will eventually be owned by its policyholders. For now, the co-op is scrambling to find customers after the state's online health exchange got off to a rocky start.

iStockphoto.com

Nothing is more important for a startup burning through cash than winning customers and revenue.

So problems with the Affordable Care Act's online marketplaces, also known as exchanges, aren't just an inconvenience for the likes of Evergreen Health Co-op. They're a threat.

"It's slowly getting better. Some people have gotten to the enrollment stage before the site freezes," says Evergreen's frustrated CEO, Dr. Peter Beilenson. "Once enrollments start occurring, we still don't expect to get notification of that from the exchange until December, which makes planning for deployment of resources challenging."

Maryland-based Evergreen is one of nearly two dozen nonprofit insurers created by the health act. Called co-ops because they will be owned by the policyholders, they're supposed to add competition and lower prices for medical coverage.

But they can't do either if customers don't know they exist. Maryland's insurance portal, intended to let shoppers compare plans and buy coverage, barely worked the first few days after it opened Oct. 1. When it did, it left Evergreen off the list of options, Beilenson said.

That got fixed. But even Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat and an enthusiastic supporter of the health law, says system flaws will take another month or six weeks to smooth out.

Meanwhile Evergreen is paying staff, renting offices and hiring doctors and has only until March under the health law's open enrollment period to recruit most clients for 2014.

With the online portal balking, Evergreen has already altered its tactics to find more customers offline. "It has clearly changed our marketing strategy to some extent," Beilenson said.

Instead of relying so heavily on finding individual customers one at a time through the Web site, Evergreen is working harder on small-business accounts that can deliver dozens of subscribers in one deal. Ads mailed to thousands of employers produced more than 100 responses in only a day, Beilenson said.

At least Beilenson can call Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Maryland's health secretary, when he wants to complain or get something fixed. One day last week he talked five times to Sharfstein, who Beilenson says has been "very responsive."

Other co-ops are unlikely have the same kind of advantage. Maryland is one of a minority of states in charge of its own Obamacare software. Co-ops in Arizona, South Carolina and elsewhere rely on the federal government's healthcare.gov site, which by many accounts is the most dysfunctional of all.

"We continue to have significant challenges," says Kathleen Oestreich, CEO of Meritus Health Partners, Arizona's co-op, which is sold through the federal portal. "Some people are expressing some frustration but not across the board by any means. Many people understand it is a big system and will take a bit to make it work."

Meritus is trying to take more advantage of brokers and face-to-face meetings with potential customers.

"Brokers are showing great interest," she said. Still, two weeks after the federal marketplace was supposed to open, she added, "we wish the enrollment had really begun in any material way."

What many describe as one of the most successful state-run portals, Kentucky's, "has corrected some of the initial log jam and we are hearing reports that things are running smoother," says Janie Miller, CEO of the Kentucky Health Cooperative. "We are excited and pumped but don't have actual enrollee counts yet."

Nobody is pushing the panic button. March 31, the end of enrollment, is several months away.

Co-ops are well financed with federal loans. Evergreen holds enough capital to be in good shape even if it doesn't reach what Beilenson calls "self-sustaining" membership of 15,000 or 20,000 in the first year, he said.

But with few confirmed customers so far and no revenue, Evergreen and its peers have much more at stake in the Obamacare software than their established competitors.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/16/235337538/hitches-on-health-exchanges-hinder-launch-of-insurance-co-ops?ft=1&f=1001
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Will Google ever bring Android and ChromeOS together?

When Google acquired Android in 2005 and subsequently unveiled it in 2007, there was no such thing as ChromeOS yet. Google’s entire OS effort was on Android, and separately the company worked on the Chrome browser for desktop and mobile operating systems.

Over the last year we’ve started to see Google have success with ChromeOS in the notebook computer market. Android and ChromeOS are both based on Linux, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. ChromeOS is a very thin client, almost everything is done via the browser.

On a personal level, I’ve now gotten to the point where I’d rather consume content on a touch screen device. I prefer swiping my finger on a screen to navigate a website rather than being forced to use a trackpad. This tells me all computers will be touchscreen soon, just like all mobile devices already are.

(UPDATE: A few people interpret this to mean I'm suggesting keyboards or mice/trackpads will be taken away. I didn't think this clarification would be required considering some Windows machines and the Chromebook Pixel have already introduced touch as an added input mechanism without taking anything away, but apparently it is necessary to make explicitly clear.)

So this raises the question — why would Google want to maintain two operating systems down the road? I don’t think they want this. And I’m trying to get my head around the possible solutions.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/bVJxDm4lP64/story01.htm
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Saturday, October 19, 2013

Fujifilm XQ1: Fuji's New Tiny Cam Packs Tons of Power in Your Pocket

When Fujifilm announced its beautiful pocket camera, the XF1 last year, we were genuinely psyched, which made the camera's disappointing handling even more of a bummer. With the XQ1, Fuji has fixed some of the XF1's annoyances and packed in the same hot image sensor that's on the badass X20. Now we're talking.

Chinese Edict Against 'Rumors' Puts Popular Bloggers At Risk

A new Chinese rule targets Chinese bloggers whose posts against their government have gone viral. One blogger and editor for the Chinese Wall Street Journal, Li Yuan, talks to host Scott Simon about the increased danger of posting in China.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. In the United States, a Tweet or YouTube video that goes viral can make a career. In China, that can be dangerous. Last month, the Chinese government issued a new edict forbidding the spreading of rumors against the Chinese government. People who intentionally post what the government considers a rumor violate the law if they get 500 or more reposts or 5,000 or more views.

So hundreds of Chinese bloggers have been arrested and many of them are known as big Vs, verified bloggers who have a large online following. Li Yuan is editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal Chinese. She joins us from Beijing. Thanks so much for being with us.

LI YUAN: Thank you.

SIMON: Is what the Chinese government considers a rumor necessarily false?

YUAN: You know, I wouldn't say everything they said is false, is incorrect sometimes. There are a lot of rumors as Internet everywhere in the world. You know, the problem is when you arrest people for posting information online, that's another scene, you know. It terrorize people.

SIMON: Now, isn't the Web in China already heavily censored?

YUAN: You know, it is a very heavily censored Internet, but still, the rest of the world, in many countries, people would think China is a very tightly controlled place, but it's not that tight. People, in the past three years, over three years, Sina Weibo is what we call the micro blogging - it's a Twitter-like service - has become very popular in China and people can tweet all kinds of things and many times those postings will be deleted by the Internet police.

But a lot of times, those words will just keep being posted everywhere again and again. It's pretty difficult to control everything. I always say this is about the most exciting thing that has ever happened to the Chinese people in thousands of years because we've never had a place where we say something and then the government has to respond.

SIMON: Yeah. You just used a phrase we don't use in the United States, Internet police, for people being locked up for something they write online.

YUAN: Yeah, maybe, you know, the more accurate term is Internet censors. Some of them are employed by the government and a lot of times they are employed by the Internet companies. These companies have to hire hundreds of people to delete postings, to delete articles or videos that may anger the government.

SIMON: This seems to be happening at a time when we're getting reports in the West about a substantial number of people being locked up. A cartoonist has been locked up for what the government, I gather, calls rumor-mongering, somebody who runs an Internet consulting company has been arrested in southwestern China. Help us understand the atmosphere there right now.

YUAN: Yeah, it's the cartoonist, he was, you know, he got a knock on the door many Internet online bloggers fear every day and it was around midnight earlier this week and he was summoned by the police. So he basically retweeted a post about a baby that was reported starved to death because the area where the baby lived was very heavily flooded and they did not - some of the residents did not get enough assistance.

So he retweeted that post and then he got locked up. You know, of course it was - he was released the next day, but really people are scared. And you can see the postings, the number of postings have decreased.

SIMON: I'm told you blog.

YUAN: Yes.

SIMON: Are you afraid of that...

(SOUNDBITE OF THREE KNOCKS)

SIMON: ...knock on the door some day soon?

YUAN: To be honest, you know, as a journalist in China, it's something you have to deal with, especially when it gets really tens. You know, when I approach my apartment sometimes, I do have that fear in my stomach. But, you know, knock on the wood. It's still, you know, so far it's O.K.

SIMON: Li Yuan who is editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal Chinese speaking with us from Beijing. Thanks very much.

YUAN: Thank you.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=237545157&ft=1&f=1004
Tags: Mexico vs Costa Rica GTA Online revenge Chobani Recall Steve Ballmer

Government Shutdown Delays Major Private Space Plane Test

A key test flight of a new private space plane that aims to be a next-generation transportation vehicle for astronauts has become another casualty of the ongoing U.S. government shutdown.

The new commercial space plane, called Dream Chaser, was slated to make a major free-flight test slated on Oct. 5 at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, located inside Edwards Air Force Base in California. But because the government shutdown has shuttered most of NASA, Dream Chaser's debut unmanned drop test is now on hold.

"Our first vehicle is primed to take its test," said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC) Space Systems based in Louisville, Colo. "Right now we're basically on final, waiting for clearance to go ahead." [Photos of Dream Chaser, America's New Space Plane]

SNC is one of three companies — along with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX ) and The Boeing Company — funded under NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative to develop a next-generation crew transportation vehicle. Of the trio of spacecraft, Dream Chaser is the only reusable, lifting body vehicle with runway landing capability.

A winged spacecraft, Dream Chaser is designed to support space station crew transportation for NASA, international and commercial space applications. The space plane is designed to launch seven astronauts and cargo on missions to and from low-Earth orbit.

Ground, captive-carry tests

SNC engineers have put the Dream Chaser prototype through a series of ground and captive-carry tests to set the stage for the now-stalled unpiloted approach-and-landing drop.

"It has been a lot of work," Sirangelo told SPACE.com.

The first Dream Chaser test vehicle has been at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center since mid-May. It has already completed ground-based taxi and tow tests, evaluated the performance of its main landing gear and completed a flight test readiness review.

That was followed by a successful two-hour captive-carry test of Dream Chaser at Dryden on Aug. 22. During that test, the craft dangled under an Erickson Air-Crane helicopter.

That assessment cleared several of the Dream Chaser systems and sub-systems prior to the upcoming free-flight test, Sirangelo told SPACE.com. Software was also tested that included flight computer, guidance, navigation and control, the vehicle's control surfaces, and the landing gear and nose skid, which was deployed during the helicopter hoisting flight.

Dream Chaser team in limbo

The closing of Dryden due to the government shutdown has meant some 50 to 60 Dream Chaser team members being placed in limbo, Sirangelo said.

"Not having access to the NASA facilities certainly delays the execution of parts of the program," he added. "But there’s nothing we can do about it. I don't think anybody can do anything about it right now."

Even a government back-to-work go-ahead would mean readying the Dream Chaser and the team for the drop test, a situation that would likely take a week of time, Sirangelo said.

"But it's not about the vehicle anymore. It's about the logistics of flying," Sirangelo added. "This was not on my contingency list. I thought I had thought of everything."

Sirangelo said Dream Chaser went to Dryden and Edwards because it was the right place to be and that's where America should test its space planes. "But we didn't think it would come back and haunt us," he said.

Dream Chaser milestones and money

Under the NASA CCiCap, the Dream Chaser work doesn't mean the private company is billing NASA every month for its time on the project.

"We get paid later when we complete the milestone," Sirangelo said. "We're funding more time, if you will, on the money."

On an upbeat note, Sirangelo said that nobody is thinking the government shutdown will go on forever. "It's just a delay a few weeks in my mind."

Furthermore, Sirangelo said that SNC is not standing still and is busy at work on future Dream Chaser plans.

"Things have gone well and we're ready to fly … and we expect to be flying this year," he said.

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin's new book "Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration" published by National Geographic. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/government-shutdown-delays-major-private-space-plane-test-111640616.html
Category: Ed Sheeran 9news

Autopsy inconclusive for fetus found in NYC bag

NEW YORK (AP) — An autopsy of a fetus found in a teenage girl's shopping bag at a New York City lingerie store was inconclusive, and more tests will be needed to determine how the fetus died, the city medical examiner's office says.

The needed tests could take a couple of weeks as police continue to look into the macabre case, the office said Friday.

Preliminary reports from detectives suggest the fetus was born alive and possibly had been asphyxiated, but chief New York Police Department spokesman John McCarthy said that the case was still being investigated and that police were awaiting the medical examiners' determination of the cause of death. The medical examiners also will determine whether it was a live birth.

The case began Thursday when a security guard stopped two 17-year-old girls to examine their bags at a Victoria's Secret store in midtown Manhattan. The guard found the dead fetus in one of the bags.

The girl who had been carrying the bag containing the fetus told detectives she had delivered a day earlier and didn't know what to do, authorities said. Police believe she delivered at the other girl's house.

Both girls were arrested on petit larceny charges. It was unclear whether either has a lawyer.

The girl believed to have given birth was taken to a hospital and remained there Friday. A woman who answered the phone at a possible home number for her said she knew nothing about the matter. A message left at another possible number wasn't immediately returned.

A woman who said she was the other girl's mother said she hadn't spoken with her daughter since her arrest and hung up.

Zami Ford, a neighbor of the girl believed to have given birth, told the Daily News she was unaware of the teen's pregnancy and stunned by the allegations.

"She's a good girl," Ford told the newspaper. "I can't believe she would do that."

___

Associated Press writer Jake Pearson contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/autopsy-inconclusive-fetus-found-nyc-bag-000215730.html
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