Life's Great Expectations!

NYT: Malay provocation - Philip Bowring

2010-01-21T23:18:00.000+08:00

2.: NYT: Malay provocation - Philip Bowring

Wed Jan 20, 2010 6:44 am (PST)

http://www.themalay sianinsider. com/index. php/opinion/ breaking- views/50156- malay-provocatio n--philip- bowring

Malay provocation - Philip Bowring

JAN 20 - One ought to be able to laugh at the absurdity of it. But the
message is one of ignorance, religious and racial prejudice and political
opportunism.

Last week, the Malaysian government declared that Christians in one part of
the country could use "Allah" as the word for God when speaking Malay, but
that those in most of the country could not.

This is the same government that is currently running a public relations
campaign called One Malaysia emphasizing the common identity of the nation's
racial and religious mix.

In reality, a government dominated by the United Malays National
Organization (UMNO) is using spurious religious/linguisti c arguments to
shore up its support among a majority Malay electorate, which has been fed
for years with preferences and privileges. Meanwhile, non-Malay money and
talent exits the country.

The government had earlier tried to stop the use of the word Allah by all
Christians. This was successfully challenged in the High Court.

But instead of letting the matter rest, the government declined to back
down, setting the scene for the fire bombing of churches. While these could
not be laid directly at the door of UMNO, hotheads in the party may well
have taken their cue from what non-Muslims see as a deliberate attempt to
stir up ethnic/religious issues for political gain.

Last year it was Hindus who were the target of Malay provocation.

UMNO political calculation demands that the organization sticks to its
demands about the use of the word Allah in peninsular Malaysia, where all
Malays are deemed Muslims and where Christians are ethnic Chinese or Indian,
but not in the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak where there are large
communities of Malay-speaking Christians.

The UMNO-led coalition needs the support of the multi-ethnic parties in
those states.

The word Allah has always been used without Muslim objection by Christians
in the Arab world, as well as those in Malay-speaking Indonesia, where there
are 10 times as many Muslims as in Malaysia.

The word is itself derived from pre-Islamic Semitic language roots. Even
Malaysia's strictly Islamist opposition party, Parti Islam (PAS), agrees
that all Abrahamic faiths are entitled to use the word Allah.

But such facts are of little relevance to UMNO politicians determined to
drum up any issue that can be used to show their commitment to defending
Malay and Muslim privileges and thus retain the support of a Malay majority
against the appeal both of PAS and the multi-ethnic Keadilan party of the
former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

UMNO cannot claim to be a party of the pious. Half a century in power has
turned it into a vast patronage machine that enriches the Malay elite,
providing support for luxurious lifestyles.

Its insistence that all Malays are Muslims (and cannot convert) is an
attempt to give religious backing to the message of Malay racial preference.
That is barely in accord with the universalist notions of global Islam but
keeps the loyalty of many Malays otherwise resentful of growing income gaps.

However, the racial and religious divides among the opposition still make an
UMNO-led government seem a better choice than the alternatives - most likely
ones in which the fundamentalism of PAS would replace the opportunism of
UMNO.

So despite the deterioration of communal relations in peninsular Malaysia,
no major changes are in sight.

This carries two main dangers.

The first is the continuing large scale exodus of capital and of talented
non-Malays. Five years of generally good prices for its main commodity
exports, oil, gas and palm oil, have delivered huge trade surpluses and a
current account surplus of more than 10 percent of gross domestic product.

But economic growth has been slow due to very weak private investment, only
partly offset by large government deficit spending. Once a major recipient
of foreign capital, Malaysia is now a source of flight capital.

This is only sustainable while commodity prices remain at double levels of
five years ago and three times those in 2002.

A longer term danger, at least as perceived by some leading Malays, such as
the former Finance Minister Tunku Razaleigh, is that a combination of
religious intolerance and resentment of federal exploitation of their
natural resources will generate secessionism in the Borneo states.

They joined Malaysia in 1963 without much enthusiasm but as the best option
open to them as the British withdrew from empire. They do not want their
traditions of racial and religious diversity to be poisoned by peninsular
prejudices.

Their separate treatment on the Allah issue will have some immediate
benefits for Kuala Lumpur, but can only underscore just how different they
are.

In short, the episode is sad commentary on a nation whose mix of races, its
fine infrastructure and wealth of resources has held such promise. If only
there really were One Malaysia. - NYT

*This is the personal opinion of the writer or the newspaper. The Malaysian
Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.
____

http://thestar. com.my/news/ story.asp? file=/2010/ 1/20/nation/ 5507622
&sec=nation

Wednesday January 20, 2010
Groups divided over 'Allah' use

PETALING JAYA: Key Muslim groups are divided over whether to reject or
accept the High Court ruling on the use of the term "Allah" in the
Herald.

This is the scenario following a meeting hosted by PKR leader Datuk
Seri Anwar Ibrahim to discuss the issue on Monday night, which ended
without the consensus he had hoped for, with one side adamant that the
term is exclusive to Muslims and the other side advocating an open
mind.

PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayob said some groups were very firm
that the Quran did not forbid non-Muslims from using the term.

He said the groups also saw the issue as an opportunity to better
explain Islam to non-Muslims.

Other groups, meanwhile, feared it would open the floodgates to
greater confusion among Muslims and were concerned that the term might
be misconstrued and used inappropriately by non-Muslims.

The groups, which attended the meeting that was held at Anwar's house,
included PKR, Jamaah Islah Malaysia, Persatuan Ulama Malaysia, Muslim
Youth League Malaysia and Teras,

Teras president Mohd Azmi Abdul Aziz stressed the term was central to
the sensitivities of Muslims in the country.

"The Muslim NGOs are not against each other but we differ in our view
on the implication of the issue on the future of Muslims as well as
the co-existence of Muslims and non-Muslims in the country," said
Mohd Azmi.

Anwar, whose party stands with PAS in supporting the court decision,
had called the meeting to hear out the concerns of these groups.

The Muslim non-governmental organisations are quite powerful opinion
shapers and he is anxious to get them behind PKR and PAS on this
issue.

There was also a suggestion that polling agency Merdeka Centre be
asked to gauge opinions on the matter, but some felt a survey on such
a sensitive matter could lead to more controversy.

Merdeka Centre director Ibrahim Suffian, who was present, said the
split in opinion was "rooted in fundamental insecurities which Malay
leaders must come to terms with".

"The discussion served to demarcate the position of the various
groups, although it would have been quite different if the more
hardline personalities were invited.

"The polemic going on also underlines Malay concerns and insecurities
since the March 8 general election," said Ibrahim.

PAS president Datuk Seri Hadi Awang could not make it because he was
overseas.
____

http://www.malaysia kini.com/ news/122384

Axing 'Herald' BM pullout 'not an option'
Yip Ai Tsin & Yoong Pui Shen | Jan 20, 10 4:13pm [extract]

Catholic weekly newspaper Herald editor Father Lawrence Andrew said it
is "not possible" for the Bahasa Malaysia pullout to be restricted to
Sabah and Sarawak, as this is akin to "splitting a strand of hair".

"It is not possible. The permit includes all three pullouts as well,"
he said when met in his office yesterday.

He added that using other words to replace 'Allah' is "very wrong" as
"that would be changing scriptures which we have no right to change".

On Jan 5, Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin had called for a
'compromise' suggesting that only Herald's edition in Sabah and
Sarawak be allowed to use 'Allah' and not the peninsula publication.
[...]
____

http://www.malaysia kini.com/ letters/122397

LETTERS: 'Ridhuan Tee has committed a seditious act'
Hai Hiung | Jan 20, 10 5:14pm

I refer to the letter The 'Chinese ethnic Islamic scholar' is his own worst
enemy.
http://www.malaysia kini.com/ letters/120787

Dr Mohd Ridhuan Tee Abdullah is at it again and this time he has managed to
shame all us Malaysians with his ultra-racist article on his blog. He
claimed that his argument is intellectual and of high moral, yet he labeled
all those who disagree with him as 'ultra-kiasu' .
http://ertee. blogspot. com/2009/ 12/accused- as-criminals- better-than- being.html

So, if I disagree with his view, I'm an 'ultra-kiasu' according to his
logic. Such hypocrisy. If he is sound in his argument, he would not be
resorting to labelling people who disagree with him with a label -
'ultra-kiasu' .

I feel ashamed to share the same nationality with this PhD holder. Giving
credit to his academic achievements I presume in his article has
intentionally omitted at least three facts:

Fact 1: Catholic Christians in Sabah and Sarawak have been using the term
'Allah' long before Malaysia was formed.

The Catholic Church has in their possession hard copy evidence - a
Malay-Latin dictionary published in 1631 which shows the translation for
'Allah' plus a Catholic prayer book published in 1894 brought over from Hong
Kong to prove that they have been using the term 'Allah' as the name of God
since four hundred years ago.
http://www.heraldma laysia.com/ news/storydetail s.php/3283- 1-0-Christians- here-called- God-Allah- four-centuries- ago

Fact 2: It is impossible to 'confuse' Muslims here for it is illegal to
distribute any pamphlet, letter, magazine or articles on religious matters
to a Muslim unless it is about Islam. The law has dictated that the Catholic
weekly 'Herald' can only be circulated amongst the non-Muslims and therefore
it would never fall into the hands of a Muslim.

So if Muslims would never get the chance to even hold a copy of this weekly
newspaper, how are Muslims going to get 'confused' by it?

Fact 3: Christians in the Middle East have been using the term 'Allah' as
God's name before the advent of Islam.

This Tee plays up racial sentiments and disguises himself as championing
Islam. The oft-repeated words used in his article is the 'tolerant' Malay
and the 'ultra-kiasu' Chinese.

This itself is evidence enough that the intention of his article is to stir
racial sentiments. Ridhuan Tee has committed a seditious act.
____

No shortage of fatwas on Allah word
http://www.mysinche w.com/node/ 34263?tid= 14

Nazri’s Offer of a Way Out: A Commentary - NH Chan
http://loyarburok. com/the-system/ bolehland/ nazris-offer- of-a-way- out-a-commentary /

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
The Berita Malaysia / bmalaysia mailing lists

a layman's perspective of the word 'Allah'

2010-01-21T23:08:00.003+08:00

1.: hartalmsm: Why I use 'Allah' - a layman's perspective

Wed Jan 20, 2010 6:35 am (PST)

http://hartalmsm. wordpress. com/2010/ 01/20/why- i-use-allah- a-laymans- perspective/

Why I use 'Allah' - a layman's perspective
January 20, 2010

By Pastor Eu Hong Seng

In the current ongoing debate, some are of the opinion that Christians
should just give in and forego the use of the word "Allah" so that the
threats and attacks on churches will stop and Malaysia can continue to
enjoy her peace and move on unhindered to developed nation status.

Now, more than ever the country needs clear-minded Malaysians and not
"confused" citizens, Christians included.

There are ten salient facts and reasons and I would like to address
these to the ordinary man in the street and lay people in the Church.
(1)

1. The use of "Allah" predates Islam

"Allah" is the Arabic name for God, and it indeed pre-dates Islam and
even Christianity. The pagan Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula called God
"Allah," even though they worshipped hundreds of idols in addition.

Christians all across the Arab World today use the word "Allah" for
God, and if one were to read an Arabic Bible, he would find that God
is indeed called "Allah."

"Allah" is also the name that Jesus Christ called God. "Allah" is the
Arabic equivalent of "Elohim," which is Hebrew for God. The "im" is a
plural appendage of respect, and so the word is "Eloh," which is very
similar to "Allah."

In addition, the Aramaic word for God is "Alaha," and Aramaic was the
language which Jesus himself spoke.

Moreover, the word "Allah" is found in the English version of the
Bible which we read today.

In Matthew 27:46 we read: "About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a
loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? ' - which means, 'My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?'" The word "Eloi" is the Aramaic form
of the Arabic "Allah." (2)

It is important to know the fact that Christians in Malaysia didn't
start using "Allah" only recently, as some contends.

2. It is used all over the world by Christians.

The Arabic word is commonly used by Christians to describe God in such
countries as Egypt, Syria and Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim
nation.

So it is not just a Malaysian word, for the Malaysian context only.
One cannot just decide to copyright an "international" word and hope
to escape ridicule.

And anybody in Malaysia can tell you that it is more than just one
word that can be involved. The focus now may be on one word,
thereafter the contention will be expanded to include other words, and
at a later stage any other word or words that the "authorities" may so
decide.

3 "Allah" was used by East Malaysians before they joined Malaya

The SIB church was formed in Sarawak state in 1928, nearly 30 years
before Malaysia's independence, and were already using "Allah" in
their worship and literature.

And some of them don't even speak BM or English, only their own mother
tongue and in their mother tongue, the word used is "Allah." So it's
not only the Alkitab, the BM Bible. The other Scriptures which use
"Allah" are the Kalibatand Lunbawang Bible.

Daniel Raut, a senior leader of SIB Church - the largest
Malay-speaking congregation in the country - said it will not drop the
use of the word "Allah," even though Christians fear for their safety.

"Since our forefathers become Christians in the 1920s, we have been
using Allah even in our mother tongue," said Raut, who is from the
Lunbawang tribe in eastern Sarawak state.

Furthermore, how does one propose that its use be restricted to East
Malaysians only? What happens when they come to work in West Malaysia?
What about the thousands who are already in West Malaysia? What about
our existing West Malaysia Bahasa Malaysia churches? What happens when
an East Malaysian crosses over to Labuan (a Federal Territory) for the
weekend?

Some proponents of the "East Malaysia only" concept take it a step
further and suggest (to those of us in West Malaysia), "when in Rome,
do as the Romans do." The Malay equivalent is "Masuk kandang lembu,
menguak. Masuk kandang kambing mengembek" (When entering the cattle
pen, moo. When entering the goat pen, bleat). [That] Perhaps it is
time the new minority, moo and bleat with the majority.

Though debatable, the new political landscape has all the major
political parties, including the key partners of the Barisan, not
aligned with Caeser, on this issue.

4. The success of our National Language education policy

Since the introduction of the National Language policy, our emerging
generation has become more proficient in Bahasa Malaysia. And with the
continued emphasis, the next two generations can be expected to be not
only proficient but dependent on the Bahasa Malaysia as the lingua
franca in our nation.

Alongside the Allah contention, there are clear intentions to further
impose restrictions on other words like "Injil" (Gospel) and
"firman" (faith). (3)

So the logical question we all are asking is "how would this pan out?"

Any strategists will tell you that in winning the generational war,
ignore the "old diehards" and focus on the future generations.

Our grandchildren and great grand-children, will find themselves
reluctant to read Scriptures in a language they are less proficient
and also not be able to access the Alkitab, and also, perhaps be the
first generation who have never heard of "firman" and "Injil?"

I can understand the zeal of the government to Islamize the nation,
(4) but I pray that they can do so with honesty and integrity. "Bring
all to the table" and aim for the hearts. Malaysians will respect you
for that.

But no coercion, no bullying, no media misrepresentation, no
scrambling the minds of our children and no re-writing of Scriptures!

But I also pray that by the same token and in the true spirit of
religious freedom, the day will soon come, when others, if they so
desire be allowed to share their respective faiths with our Muslim
friends as is fully acceptable and permissible in Indonesia, the
largest Muslim country in the world.

Surely, Indonesia is a great example to us on what freedom of religion
is all about. Sharing one's faith with another should not be narrowly
interpreted as with 'intent to convert'. Understanding one another's
faith is surely an excellent way of promoting goodwill, peace and
harmony among the multi religious population in this lovely country of
ours.

Under the present circumstances, the many proposed "inter faith
dialogues" and formation of councils to facilitate such dialogues will
be nothing but a monologue, as the other faiths are "gagged" in the
name of the constitution.

5. Used by others as well

The Sikhs use "Allah" in their Scriptures. Do we stop them next?

What about Hindus, who also refer to one of their gods as "Allah?"

Rigveda is the most sacred scripture of the Hindus, and one of the
attributes given to God Almighty in Book no 2 Hymn no I verse II, is
'Ila' which if pronounced properly is the same as Allah. (5)

So it is not a Christian issue alone.

What the Christians are asked to do, the Sikhs and the Hindus will be
asked to do, eventually.

6. Constitutional right to "manage" our own religion

This right must include how we address our God.

Over enthusiastic bureaucrats, consequentially are interfering with
the worship & education of Christians - CDs have been confiscated,
Sunday School materials are held up by customs, besides the
confiscations of the Alkitab.

According to Prof. Dr. Shad Saleem Faruqi (6), the Malaysian
Constitution provides that Islam is the religion of the federation.
But all other religions may be practiced in peace and harmony: Article
3(1).

In respect of religion, every person has the right to three things:

1. To profess
2. To practice
3. And, subject to Article 11(4), to propagate his religion: Article 11(1).

Every religious group has the right to:

1. Manage its own affairs
2. Establish and maintain institutions for religious purposes.
3. Acquire and own property and administer it: Article 11(3).
4. Establish and maintain institutions for religious education:
Article 12(2). (7)

Our constitutional right, to manage our own affairs, to practice
religion freely has been increasing under threat particularly over the
past two decades.

7. Dictating what should be in the Scriptures of a major religion in the
world

This suggestion that another word be used is perhaps "the biggest joke."

Whether one agrees or not about the word is not the main issue.

The basic issue, lest we forget the obvious, is that each and every
religious Scriptures is the sacred book - of Christians (including the
Kalibat and Lunbawang), the Sikhs and the Hindus.

We are not talking about some supplementary textbooks or a "pseudo
scripture" just written recently.

Are those who argue for a substitute word suggesting that all these
Holy Books be re-written to accommodate a few?

If it is suggested by adherents of the respective faiths, this could
perhaps be more acceptable. But when followers of one faith, suggest
(and insist) that believers of another faith, re-write their
Scriptures to pander to their"unsubstantiat ed convictions" then we are
not too far from the "height of arrogance."

I know Malaysia is "boleh-land" but this move to "force" the other
religious groups to rewrite their Scriptures is preposterous.

8. Prominent scholars of Islam and Muslim organizations have supported
the use of "Allah" by Christians

In Malaysiakini dated 13th Jan 2010, Constitutional Law expert Abdul
Aziz Bari contends that it is pretty clear that the use of Allah by
Christians has some basis in the Quran.

This is strengthened by the exposition of eminent scholars, including
Egyptian scholar Shaykh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (Maal Hijrah award recipient
2009) who said that Christians, as part of the Abrahamic faiths
together with the Jews and Muslims, can use the word 'Allah'. (8)

Earlier on, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) on 4th Jan
2010, also issued a statement viz -

"With regards to actual and historical practices, Christian Arabs have
been using the word "Allah" to refer to God in their religious sources
since the inception of Islam, and have never been challenged by
private Muslims or Muslim governments on this ground. Islamic law is
clear that followers of the Christian faith have the right to practice
their religion according to their own religious teachings.

[Malaysia has long been a good example of Islamic tolerance and] We
call on the Malaysian government to uphold the religious freedom of
Christians and to let the court ruling stand. We also urge Muslim NGOs
to respect Islamic teachings and long-held Islamic traditions, and to
withdraw their opposition to the use of the word "Allah" by their
Christian compatriots. " (9)

We would like to hear from our government a more coherent and
intelligent response to these prominent voices than simply quote "this
is Malaysia."

9. Our State Anthems will take on a new meaning.

How does one sing the state anthems of Selangor, Perak, Kedah, Pahang,
Johor, Kelantan and Trengganu now, since there are references to
"Allah" in these songs, as it is now implied to refer to the Muslim
God only?

In schools, about 30 years ago, we were told we were singing to "God."
Now are our children to sing only to one particular God?

[See appendix below for list of affected State Anthems]

Unless, of course, one is liberal and don't mind singing to all gods
or any god or just the Muslim god.

10. We need to keep in mind that there was "good harmony" in the first
30 years after Merdeka, with freedom to use "Allah."

It never was an issue until enthusiastic politicians promulgated the
infamous ISA gazette in 1982, referring to the Alkitab as a document
"prejudicial to the national interest and security of the Federation."
The rest is history.

What an insult!

But the Christian community has always been a peace loving people. For
the sake of harmony, Christians engaged in closed door meetings in the
past, to negotiate "restricted use" of the word rather than to bring
it to the courts. And we were always assured by the government that we
could use our Alkitab.

But today, they are saying we cannot use the word and the various
government agencies started confiscating various Christian materials,
not just the Alkitab.

And the claim is we "used to accept it" - but that's because we have
been tricked into negotiating behind closed doors in the name of the
Malaysian culture of "talk and resolve quietly."

So because "nobody" heard from us, now they (even rulers) take
advantage and say, we accepted it all these while.

This is absolutely not true.

Christians have been moaning, complaining, objecting and writing to
the government for years.

Should we concede for the sake of peace alone?

Friends, perhaps the time of closed door meetings - where our views
are deliberately misrepresented (10) and compromised - where the
minority is always bullied and threatened into submission for the sake
of harmony and in the name of sensitivity, is over?

It is indeed sad, that after 52 years of independence, the country is
still not ready for mature dialogue, and is still struggling to hear
the voice of reason.

We disagree with this view, as the leaders of the Christian Federation
of Malaysia (CFM), the component members being the Roman Catholic, the
Council Churches of Malaysia and the National Evangelical Christian
Fellowship of Malaysia, have met on several occasions over the last
few years and have repeatedly affirmed the wishes of the Christians,
both in East and West Malaysia, ie we would not compromise on the use
of the word "Allah."

The dissenting voice is a very small minority and is obviously being
used to portray a misleading view.

I would urge all Christians to refer to the "Kuching Declaration"
dated Sept 1989, where the Roman Catholics, the CCM and the NECF came
together to formally adopt a united stand to use the word "Allah."

[See -
http://www.necf. org.my/newsmaste r.cfm?&action= view&menuid= 154&retrieveid= 976]

This is not a race issue, this is not a Malay supremacy issue, this is
not even a religious issue. And this is definitely not an East-West
Malaysia issue. (11)

Before us are simply constitutional and "human rights" issues, a call
to respect the spiritual convictions and Scriptures of other faiths.
This is simply a call to exercise common sense and to respect
boundaries - i.e. no rewriting Scriptures!

I hope and pray that the above facts and reasons would help Christians
understand that we are not insisting on using "Allah" to "irritate"
the "easily confused people" of the land.

We continue to pray for peace and seek a reasoned solution, so that
Malaysia can indeed shine as a land so affectionately known as "truly
Asia."

Appendix - State Anthems

Selangor
Duli Yang Maha Mulia
Selamat di atas takhta
Allah lanjutkan usia Tuanku
Rakyat mohon restu bawah Duli Tuanku
Bahagia selama-lamanya
Aman dan sentosa
Duli Yang Maha Mulia

Kedah
Allah selamatkan Sultan Mahkota
Berpanjangan usia diatas Takhta
Memelihara agama Nabi kita
Negeri Kedah serata-rata

Perak
Dilanjutkan Allah usianya Sultan
Adil dan murah memerintah watan
Ditaati rakyat kiri dan kanan
Iman yang soleh Allah kurniakan
Allah berkati Perak Ridzuan
Allah selamatkan Negeri dan Sultan.

Johor
Allah peliharakan Sultan
'Nugrahkan dia segala kehormatan
Sihat dan ria, kekal dan makmur
Luaskan kuasa, menaungkan kami
Rakyat dipimpini berzaman lagi
Dengan Merdeka bersatu hati
Allah berkati Johor
Allah selamatkan Sultan

Pahang
Ya Allah Yang Masa Kuasa,
Lanjutkan Usia Duli Yang Maha Mulia,
Dirgahayu, Darul Makmur,
Aman dan Bahagia Sentiasa,
Ya Allah Selamatkan Duli Tuanku Raja Kami

Trengganu
Allah daulatkan Tuanku Sultan,
Terengganu Darul Iman,
Allah peliharakan Tuanku Sultan,
Sejahtera sepanjang zaman,
Allah rahmatkan Tuanku Sultan,
Memerintah rakyat aman.

Kelantan
Lanjutka usia Al-Sultan kami
Sultan Kelantan raja ikrami
Aman sentosa Tuhan sirami
Kekal memerintah kami
Kasih dan taat setia disembahkan
Keriangan diucapkan
Segala kebesaran Allah cucurkan
Bertambah kemuliaan

Footnotes:

(1)
This article is in response to the many requests for clarification from
lay people in churches.

(2)
Hesham A. Hassaballa is a physician and writer living in Chicago.
He is co-author of The Beliefnet Guide to Islam (Doubleday).

http://www.middle- east-online. com/English/ ?id=36608

(3)
See the Pahang enactment

(4)
I believe every true and faithful follower will want to share their faith,
and Muslims are no exception.

(5)
Other references to use of Allah :

BOOK 2 - HYMN 1 Verse 11 - Thou, God, art Aditi to him who offers gifts:
thou, Hotra, Bharati, art strengthened by the song.

Thou art the hundred-wintered I?a to give strength, Lord of Wealth!

V?tra-slayer and Sarasvati.

BOOK 3 - HYMN XXIII Verse 4 He set thee in the earth's most lovely
station, in I?a's place, in days of fair bright weather.

On man, on Apaya, Agni! on the rivers D??advati, Sarasvati, shine richly.

(6)
Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr. Shad Saleem Faruqi is a Malaysian Senior
Professor of law who has served Universiti Teknologi MARA in Shah Alam,
Selangor in various capacities from 1971 onwards. He served as the Head of
the Diploma in Law program (1979 - 1984), as Assistant Rector (1996-1999),
Assistant Vice Chancellor

(1999 - 2001) and Legal Advisor (1996 - 2006).

He has also served on the faculties of law at the International
Islamic University Malaysia, part time at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and
a visiting professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia

(7)
The Federal Constitution and the Social Contract by Prof. Dr. Shad
Saleem Faruqi -
http://74.125. 153.132/search? q=cache:VoCPy4Nb 85sJ:cpps. org.my/resource_ centre/Prof. %2520
Dr.%2520Shad% 2520Saleem% 2520Faruqi. ppt+Malaysia+ constitutional+ Article+11& cd
=7&hl=en
&ct=clnk&gl= my&client= firefox-a

(8)
http://national- express-malaysia .blogspot. com/2010/ 01/allah- decree-does- sultan-have-
power.html

(9)
http://www.isna. net/articles/ News/ISNA- Commends- Malaysian- Court-Ruling-
that-Affirms- Religious- Freedom-of- Christians. aspx

(10)
Muhyiddin said he had been receiving quite a number of messages from
non-Muslim friends in Sabah and Sarawak who said there were Christians
who felt that things would not have happened in the first place - if we,
the Christians, would just not use the word 'Allah' - Bernama 14th
Jan 2010

(11)
Just because a few Christians in West or East Malaysia, don't understand
the issue and voice their ignorance, this does not mean the whole of West
or the whole of the East Malaysian communities are against the use of the
word. We need to be aware of the sinister aims to make both the West and
East Malaysian Christians misunderstand each other. By all means, "share"
and educate each other. But beware of answering and correcting in the cyber
space and give the impression, that the West or the East Malaysian
Christians
are ignorant, naïve or disunited - we would not want to fall prey to the
schemes
of the "dark side." The "Kuching Declaration" clearly shows the Christians
in both West and East Malaysia are united. And today, we remain resolute and
unyielding in our stand.

-00000-

HartalMSM: Please note the Prime Minister attended and officiated
the opening of an UPKO convention on 8th November 2009 during which a
speech by the UPKO president clearly outlined the concerns of the christian
bumiputras in East Malaysia.

Read the news report by Herald Malaysia Online (here).
http://go2.wordpres s.com/?id= 725X1342& site=hartalmsm. wordpress. com&url=http% 3A%2F%2Fwww. heraldmalaysia. com%2Fnews% 2Fstorydetails. php%2FDaring- speech-by- Tan-Sri-Bernard- Dompok%2F3346- 2-1
____

Daring speech by Tan Sri Bernard Dompok
Published On November 20 , 2009
http://www.heraldma laysia.com/ news/storydetail s.php/Daring- speech-by-
Tan-Sri-Bernard- Dompok/3346- 2-1

Are You Happy???

2009-09-15T18:27:00.003+08:00

Hello Kitty: The Funny, The Weird, And The Horrifying

2009-09-15T18:19:00.001+08:00

Source: Hello Kitty: The Funny, The Weird, And The Horrifying

Thanks to the marketing skills of Japanese company Sanrio, Hello Kitty’s cute-cat character has been going strong for 35 years and has become an internationally-recognized brand. One of the most diverse and unpredictable places in the entire universe, the world of Hello Kitty encompasses a vast collection of strange products that dazzle the mind and serve as material for an extensive list of noteworthy weirdness.

Since there are thousands of Hello Kitty products in just about every category imaginable, it’s difficult to find the weirdest of the weird. Furthermore, many Hello Kitty pictures floating around the Internet are actually photoshopped fakes, so it takes some time to figure out what’s real and what’s not.

Still, I managed to scrape together this list of examples that appear to be legitimate products. So, hold on to your seats and get ready to be entertained, disturbed, and maybe even sexually abused by one of the world’s most famous felines!

Guns.
Did you think Hello Kitty was too cute for violence? Think again, because with a little effort you could be the proud owner of an assault rifle just like this one.

Anti-virus programs.
Looks like the Hello Kitty brand has been exploited to market someone’s anti-virus program. Personally, I wouldn’t trust my computer’s health and well-being with something like this.

Condoms.
After researching and writing an article about weird Asian condoms, I can’t believe I missed this one. I mean, it’s so natural to expect Hello Kitty on a condom package, right?

Condom holders.
Buy yourself one of those Hello Kitty condoms, and you’ll probably have to spring for one of these lovely condom holders as well.

Tooth caps.
Any votes for this precious little innovation of orthodontics? Why yes thank you, I’d simply love to have Hello Kitty’s face implanted permanently in my mouth!

Urinal targets.
I am not making this up. Even if you’re a Hello Kitty fan, why would this be appealing? On the other hand, if you don’t care too much for her, the whole experience of relieving yourself could be very gratifying.

Toilet seats.
Girls, please don’t feel left out after seeing that last product. To guarantee your complete urination experience, Hello Kitty also adorns toilet seats.

Electronic toilet paper dispensers.
Here’s yet another one for the bathroom. Talk about an invasion of privacy. Is there nowhere Hello Kitty won’t go? (For those of you who are wondering, yes, Hello Kitty toilet paper is also available.)

Sausage links.
This is just bizarre. Who really wants to see that dancing around on their meat tubes?

Jets.
Taiwanese Eva Air has a Hello Kitty airplane that flies between Taiwan and Japan. The interior decoration is Hello Kitty-themed, of course.

Contacts.
This is similar to those creepy cat-eye contacts people wear during the Halloween season. Although these don’t grab your attention as quickly, once you realize what’s going on, it’s pretty strange.

Wedding dresses.
You’ve got to have a serious crush on Hello Kitty to get married in one of these. What do you think, guys? Sexy, or maybe not so much?

Fake fingernails.
Put these on and spread the Hello Kitty love to everyone around you. It’s like the famous Midas touch, except nothing turns into gold. Instead, people just stare at you with undisguised perplexity.

Bongs.
If I’m reading the right sources, this is apparently a Hello Kitty coin bank that has been modified for smoking pot. As far as I know, it’s not technically a real product, but hey, it’s pretty hilarious!

Tampons and pads.
Is there a “bodily fluids” theme going on here, or am I just crazy? Boldly going where few cartoon characters dare to go, Hello Kitty.

Douches.
Someone please tell me this is a fake, or just go ahead and kill me right now. I have no idea why something like Hello Kitty should ever be associated with douches.

Vibrators.
Let’s not get into the details here, but you really have to be in love with Hello Kitty to want this one. Also available in black, red, and lavender.

Floggers.
Okay, maybe the vibrators can be tolerated. But floggers? Please excuse me for a moment while I stare in utter horror at my computer screen. I think I’ve finally reached a point where words no longer serve any purpose whatsoever.

House.
What better way to store all your weird and crazy Hello Kitty stuff, than in your Hello Kitty House…

A few of our Twitter followers had the following to share as well:

Becks Beer
Thanks to @Munkitude for this one.

Corsets
Thanks to @rabelrouser for this one.

So there you have it. Welcome to the weird world of Hello Kitty!

(links 1 2 3)

By Brandt on 14-09-2009

SEC bungled Madoff probes, agency watchdog says

2009-09-02T22:43:00.000+08:00

SEC badly bungled probes of Madoff scheme, agency watchdog says -- incompetence, not corruption

By Marcy Gordon, AP Business Writer
On Wednesday September 2, 2009, 9:34 pm EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pushing past years of "red flags," investigators at the Securities and Exchange Commission bungled their probes of Bernard Madoff so badly that his multibillion-dollar fraud not only flourished but he used the exams to suck in new investors, an agency watchdog declared Wednesday.

The report by the SEC inspector general shows that no smoking gun of corruption was found in the agency's conduct toward the disgraced financier. Instead it painted a grim picture of an agency hobbled by incompetence -- failing to pursue the most obvious leads -- that cleared the way for Madoff to continue what could be the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history for more than a decade.

One of the most striking points in the report is that the investigations actually may have made things worse.

"Madoff proactively informed potential investors that the SEC had examined his operations" and found nothing amiss, it says. The fact that three SEC inspections and two investigations failed to detect the fraud gave credibility to Madoff's operations and encouraged more people to give him their money.

The report by inspector general David Kotz cites no evidence of improper ties between agency officials and Madoff, nor of senior SEC officials trying to influence the agency's probes of his business. Speculation had raged in December, when Madoff confessed to the scheme, that the financier's influence and ties to the SEC as a prominent Wall Street figure had prompted agency officials to pull their punches in investigations of his business.

The SEC enforcement staff "almost immediately caught (him) in lies and misrepresentations but failed to follow up on inconsistencies" and rejected whistleblowers' offers to provide additional evidence, the report says.

"The fact that for 16 years (the SEC) had on blinders and earmuffs is mind-numbing," said Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC enforcement attorney and federal prosecutor now in private law practice.

Four high-ranking SEC officials who were lambasted over the Madoff affair at a congressional hearing in February -- including the enforcement director and the head of the inspections office -- have left the agency.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, appointed by President Barack Obama, took the helm in January. Enforcement efforts have been strengthened, and the agency has started a number of initiatives meant to protect investors in the wake of the financial crisis, officials say.

Madoff, who pleaded guilty in March, has begun serving a 150-year sentence in federal prison in North Carolina for a pyramid scheme that destroyed thousands of people's life savings, wrecked charities and gave the financial system yet another big jolt. The legions of investors who lost money included Hollywood celebrities, ordinary people and famous names in business and sports -- as well as big hedge funds, international banks and charitable foundations worldwide.

Revelations in December of the SEC's failure to uncover Madoff's massive scheme over more than a decade touched off one of the most painful scandals in the agency's 75-year history.

The inspector general plans to issue separate audits that will include recommendations for changes in the agency's enforcement and inspection operations.

His report "makes clear that the agency missed numerous opportunities to discover the fraud," new chairman Schapiro said in a statement. "It is a failure that we continue to regret, and one that has led us to reform in many ways how we regulate markets and protect investors."

Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said the panel has scheduled a hearing for Sept. 10 on Kotz's report, at which the inspector general is expected to testify. The testimony will "guide us as we continue our work on a bill to modernize financial regulations," Dodd said.

Between June 1992 and last December, the SEC received six "substantive complaints that raised significant red flags" regarding Madoff's operations. But "a thorough and competent investigation or examination was never performed," the Kotz's report says.

For example, Harry Markopolos, a fraud investigator who had worked in the securities industry, brought his allegations to the SEC about improprieties in Madoff's business starting in 2000 after determining there was no way Madoff could have been making the consistent returns he claimed. Markopolos and his investigators raised 29 specific warnings regarding Madoff's operations to SEC staff members in Boston, New York and Washington.

The agency also received complaints from a number of other sources, all containing specific information that called for a thorough examination of Madoff's business, the report says.

Many of the SEC staff members who conducted the investigations were "inexperienced," according to the report.

It cites examinations of Madoff's business done in 2004 and 2005 by the agency's inspections office. In both exams, the staff "made the surprising discovery" that Madoff's mysterious investment business was making far more money than his well-known wholesale brokerage operation. "However, no one identified this revelation as a cause for concern," the report says.

Madoff himself, who was once chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market and had sat on SEC advisory committees, had boasted of his ties to the agency.

The inspector general's investigation found no evidence, though, that any SEC staff who worked on the exams or investigations of Madoff's business had financial or other improper connections with him that influenced the probes.

The disclosure in December of the agency's failure in the Madoff affair, coming after the financial crisis struck last fall, buttressed the mounting criticism from lawmakers and investor advocates that Wall Street and regulators in Washington had grown too close.

Christopher Cox, then the SEC chairman, responded by delivering a stunning rebuke to his own career staff, blaming them for the failure to uncover Madoff's wrongdoing. Cox's critics said targeting the staff was his attempt to salvage his own reputation.

Invasion of the botnets: Cyberattacks on the rise

2009-08-28T22:53:00.000+08:00

Invasion of the botnets: Cyberattacks on the rise

The types of cyberattacks aren't new, but the speed and number of them are on the rise

By William Jackson
Aug 28, 2009

For the past year, the cyber threat landscape has been dominated not by new vulnerabilities and exploits so much as by the sheer number of attacks against information technology systems and the growing professionalization of the bad guys behind them.

In this report:

New threats emerge from once-trusted protocols and services

“The sexiness of the threat has not increased,” said one industry observer who met with a multiagency task force on intrusion. “But the exposure in terms of the number of exploits is growing exponentially.”

The numbers are sobering.

“Malware is at the highest point we’ve ever seen it,” said Dave Marcus, director of security research at McAfee Avert Labs. “2008 was the biggest year so far. The first half of 2009 has eclipsed all of 2008,” with 8,000 new variants appearing each day. “It’s easier to create new malware than ever before.”

Symantec reports similar activity. The company created 1.6 million new threat signatures in 2008, or about one new signature every 20 seconds. It has created 2 million signatures in the first half of this year, or about one every eight seconds.

The most visible results of this epidemic of malware are the periodic distributed denial-of-service attacks that generate a lot of attention. The most high-profile recent example was the July 4 outbreak that apparently originated in North Korea and targeted government and commercial Web sites in the United States and South Korea. Smaller outbreaks have targeted popular social-networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Such attacks have become a part of online life, observers say. Because of the prevalence of denial-of-service attacks and the volume of transactions now conducted online, some experts rate the attacks as a greater threat than compromises inside a system that can be used for the remote execution of malicious code or theft of information. But most experts agree that in the long run, a successful exploit that executes code inside a system is more likely to do significant damage.

“I see them happening more and more,” George Schu, vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, said of denial-of-service attacks. “But in general, they aren’t a very serious problem.”

Denial-of-service attacks can disrupt business and online availability of resources but do little or no long-term damage. Organizations need to be prepared to identify and recover from such attacks, but in the end, “you still are going to be attacked,” Schu said.

Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of Finjan, agrees. “There is nothing much you can do about it,” he said.

One difficulty in responding to online attacks, whether they are denials of service or intrusions, is determining their source. Because botnets that launch denial-of-service attacks can be global, the immediate source of the malicious traffic offers little information about the ultimate source of the attack or its motive. Last month’s so-called North Korean attacks appear to have been controlled from a server in the United Kingdom. Reports of infiltrations of U.S. government and power grid systems by Chinese hackers also could be only speculation.

“Just because it is located in China doesn’t mean that a Chinese [person] is behind it,” said Patrick Peterson, a Cisco fellow and security researcher.

Although denial-of-service attacks can be mitigated, the availability of large-scale botnets — global networks of compromised computers under remote control — as a platform for delivering the malicious traffic makes the attacks difficult if not impossible to prevent. It’s hard to say just how big botnets are. McAfee reports as many as 3 million to 4 million new infections a month, but the lifespan of a botnet can be short, sometimes only a day or two before an infection is discovered and removed. However, some machines also are reinfected regularly.

“You have to be updating and scanning regularly” to avoid becoming part of a botnet, Marcus said.

The spread of malware

These highly distributed malicious networks are created and kept available by the proliferation of malware to infect computers and recruit more zombies.

“The explosion of new malware variants is what keeps me up at night,” said Zulfikar Ramzan, technical director of Symantec Security Response.

Attackers are getting around signature-based anti-malware tools by changing the code just enough to sneak it past the filters. Not every variant works, but enough of them are successful to keep signature writers busy.

“The model is shifting from a massive distribution of a few threats to the microdistribution of a large number of different threats,” Ramzan said. “There can be a unique variant of a threat for every person who downloads it.”

This mass production of variants is being enabled by automated tools and services available to hackers and criminals, a commercialization of malware that Peterson calls “infection as a service.”

“Capitalism is a big motivator,” Peterson said. “A lot of the things they do, they need to do at scale. Twelve or 24 months ago, a lot of criminals were doing everything themselves.”

Underground developers now are specializing in providing professional tools and services to their community at a profit, such as online services with a tool to run new malware variants against the most popular antivirus engines to identify ones that can make it through undetected.

“What we’re seeing is that there is a lot of collaboration going on in the development of malicious code,” said Eddie Schwartz, chief security officer of NetWitness. Collaboration and specialization facilitate the rapid production of designer malware that can target specific groups, types of systems and data.

Growing specialization coupled with the persistence of known vulnerabilities in IT infrastructure is a dangerous combination. Old vulnerabilities persist partially because the infrastructure and user base are so large and complex. For example, old versions of software and hardware are unlikely to be completely replaced over any short period of time and are so embedded that they often are overlooked in patching, Schwartz said.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to get to the point where we can throw out certain vulnerabilities,” he said. That base of vulnerabilities, coupled with more sophisticated exploit delivery tools, “enables malware writers to throw the kitchen sink at people.”

The ability to throw multiple exploits against a system is another growing threat. Automated toolkits allow attackers to bundle exploits in a single package so that a computer or system can be searched for many vulnerabilities. Often, a successful cyberattack does not require a zero-day exploit, just a toolkit of tried-and-true exploits. The attacker needs to find only one unpatched flaw in the system to take advantage of.

Turning pro

Exploits and attacks are becoming not only more automated but also more professional, said Roger Thornton, chief technology officer of Fortify Software. The most serious attacks can go unnoticed because they are difficult to detect.

“Some of the attacks are brilliant in finding a system and compromising it,” Thornton said. “But the system wasn’t even the target.” The compromised system is used to plant code somewhere else in the network, where it gathers data and then leaves while covering its tracks. “Man, these guys are good,” he said.

Bad guys also are getting better at defense, he said. The wide-spreading Conficker worm uses cryptography to protect its command and control communications. When weaknesses were found in a hashing algorithm used by Conficker, it was upgraded to a new algorithm.

“They fix security vulnerabilities,” Thornton said. “These adversaries are doing security better than us.”

Compromised computers also can provide computing power and bases of operation for the criminals controlling them. Thornton described one case in which a financial services company was infected.

“The hackers had uploaded much more data than they had downloaded,” he said. It appeared that the objective had been to upload stolen credit card numbers. The hackers then used this database of numbers to test personal identification numbers used to validate them for transactions.

Trying to find the four-digit PIN for a given card could take 10,000 tries, which would be time-consuming and would tip off the service validating the card after too many repeated failures. But testing one PIN against a database of hundreds of thousands of card numbers is almost certain to be successful. This method creates no suspicious number of failed attempts on any one card, and the traffic it generated was not noticed on the company’s network.

The criminals also covered their tracks well, Thornton said. “All of their logs were encrypted, and encrypted well. There were no artifacts left behind.”

Targeting social media

Another threat trend is the speed with which these rapidly evolving tools are used against new targets, especially social-networking sites. One example is the widely used Twitter microblogging service. Within a month of its appearance, phishers were targeting Twitter, Marcus said.

“I don’t remember anything else that was attacked that quickly,” he said.

Twitter is not alone. Popular networking services, such as Facebook and the YouTube video service, often face attacks that attempt to use them as vectors for delivering malware. They also are subjects of phishing attacks that lure users into visiting inappropriate sites and surrendering personal information.

Despite the innovations, the attacks being delivered through these new sites are often the same types that most people have learned to avoid in e-mail. “A lot of the new technology tends to get exploited in all the old tried-and-true ways,” Marcus said. “Whatever the new technology is, you are probably going to see spam, phishing and password stealing.”

The nature of social networking helps to enable the use of social engineering in malicious attacks, Symantec’s Ramzan said. Social engineering involves crafting an attack with specific information to calm a victim’s fears and convince him or her that a communication is genuine.

“The idea of social engineering has been around for years,” he said. “But with social-networking sites, information that used to be private is now public, so it can make it easier for attackers to inject social context into an attack.”

All of which means that administrators and users need to constantly re-evaluate how they defend their systems, experts say. People need to be as suspicious of tweets and videos as they are of e-mails, and administrators need to think offensively and understand the attacks being used against them when protecting their systems.

Security vendors also need to constantly upgrade their tools and products. For some time, static defenses, such as firewalls and signature-based antivirus and intrusion detection, have been inadequate by themselves. Ben-Itzhak, whose company does content analysis, said real-time content analysis is the critical to defending systems. Organizations should scan incoming code to determine its intent before it is allowed in.

“You can read the code like a book and see what it does,” he said.

Vendors of traditional signature-based tools such as Symantec and McAfee are adding new tools to their products because the rapid proliferation of malware is making signatures inadequate. They are using heuristic and behavior-based detection in addition to signatures and are moving to reputation-based security by monitoring suspect traffic on millions of machines to determine the sources of malicious traffic that should be blocked.

However, no one recommends doing away with signature-based defenses. Because so many known exploits still work and are in circulation, antivirus companies update their signature files as quickly as possible to provide an efficient first line of defense.

“These kinds of threats are still best handled by signatures,” Ramzan said.

No matter how good tools get at warding off the wave of rapidly morphing malware, they are not likely to remain adequate for long.

“In a year or two years from now, there will be another way to attack that will get around these,” Ben-Itzhak said. “Security is dynamic.”

About the Author

William Jackson is a senior writer for GCN.

New threats emerge from once-trusted protocols and services

2009-08-28T22:49:00.001+08:00

New threats emerge from once-trusted protocols and services

Vulnerabilities in services such as DNS and SSL open new avenues of attack

By William Jackson
Aug 28, 2009

The rapid morphing and bundling of exploits for known vulnerabilities could be the biggest concern for security experts, but that doesn’t mean that new threats are not emerging. Two of the most troubling are in the Domain Name System and Secure Sockets Layer, services users have trusted for years.

In this report:

Invasion of the botnets: Cyberattacks on the rise

A zero-day exploit emerged last month for a vulnerability in one of the most commonly used DNS servers, forcing many users to update the software that helps to direct Internet traffic.

“Pretty much any BIND 9 server can be brought down with this script,” said Branko Miskov, product manager director at BlueCat Networks. “Our development team was quite surprised at how simple this was.”

Also last month, researchers demonstrated exploits using fraudulent X.509 certificates against SSL, the Web protocol for securing sessions between servers and clients. SSL is an almost transparent scheme that underlies many financial and other secure transactions via the Internet.

“That was a system that worked very well and has given us a sense of security for years,” said Booz Allen Hamilton Vice President George Schu. Recent developments “indicate that these guys are getting really clever and looking for new ways to do harm.”

DNS is a protocol for associating domain names, such as gcn.com, with the numerical IP addresses that are used to direct Internet traffic. DNS underlies almost all Internet activity. BIND — originally the Berkeley Internet Name Domain — is a widely used open-source DNS software that likely is being used on more than half of the world’s public DNS servers. The Internet Systems Consortium, which maintains BIND, announced in July that an exploit already was in wide circulation for a vulnerability, which can cause servers running release 9 of the software to crash.

According to ISC, when most versions of BIND 9 — the current release of the software — are configured as a master server, the receipt of a specially crafted dynamic update message can cause the server to crash. “Testing indicates that the attack packet has to be formulated against a zone for which that machine is a master,” ISC’s alert states. “Launching the attack against slave zones does not trigger” the crash. “This vulnerability affects all servers that are masters for one or more zones — it is not limited to those that are configured to allow dynamic updates.”

In many ways, crashing a DNS server is a less serious attack than cache poisoning, which can redirect traffic to malicious sites. A flaw in the DNS protocols that could allow cache poisoning was announced last summer.

However, the current BIND flaw is serious because it is easy to exploit. ISC rated this vulnerability at high severity, largely because of the existence of a zero-day exploit. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Vulnerability Database rates it at medium severity, with a low rating for its impact but a high rating for its exploitability.

Problems with the X.509 digital certificate standard were discussed by two researchers at last month’s Black Hat Briefings. Because the X.509 standard is not specific enough and vendors implement it differently in their products, it is possible to fool Web browsers and other clients into accepting certificates that are invalid or are not for the server to which the client is being directed. In separate presentations at the computer security conference, Dan Kaminsky, director of penetration testing at IOActive, and hacker and yachtsman Moxie Marlinspike, of Thoughtcrime.org, demonstrated similar exploits against SSL.

Kaminsky has been working with vendors who implement the technology, such as Open SSL, Netscape and Microsoft, to patch the problems until a more permanent solution can be put into place. He would like to see X.509 replaced with a scheme built on a Domain Name System using the DNS Security Extensions.

Mozilla already has incorporated the fix in Version 3.5 of its Firefox browser.

About the Author

William Jackson is a senior writer for GCN.

Uncouth Facebook postings closing doors for job candidates

2009-08-20T22:40:00.000+08:00

Source: Uncouth Facebook postings closing doors for job candidates

More employers than ever are researching job candidates on sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter in order to find out more about their activities and character. And, it turns out, many candidates are doing a great job of showing their potential bosses poor communication skills, inappropriate pictures, and even how many workplace secrets they can leak.

By Jacqui Cheng | Last updated August 20, 2009 3:02 PM CT

Some of us had the luck of doing stupid things online before most employers knew what social networking was. (I'll admit it: in my early working days, I said some not-nice things online about some of the people I worked with.) These days, however, those looking for jobs have had many years to build up an unsavory history across the Internet, and employers now know how to do their homework. In fact, nearly half of the employers in the US now search for job candidates on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, according to survey results from CareerBuilder. The job-finding firm said that the numbers reflect a twofold increase over those who reported doing so in last year—45 percent in 2009 versus 22 percent in 2008—and cautioned that many employers choose not to hire based on information they find online.

Facebook was the most popular site for researching job candidates this year—no surprise there, since Facebook has exploded in popularity as of late. "Professional" networking site LinkedIn came in second at 26 percent, MySpace came in third at 21 percent, 11 percent read blogs, and seven percent followed candidates' updates on Twitter. Paranoid yet about any of your recent tweets?

If you're looking for a job, you probably should be. More than a third of survey respondents said that they found info that caused them not to hire the person applying for the job, including "provocative or inappropriate photographs," content related to drinking or using drugs, and finding postings that badmouthed previous employers, coworkers, or clients. Other candidates showed poor communication skills on their social networking profiles, made discriminatory comments, lied about their qualifications, or shared confidential information from a previous employer. The one that made us cringe? "16 percent dismissed a candidate for using text language such as GR8 (great) in an e-mail or job application."

On the other hand, some candidates are doing a good job of presenting their professional side when posting online. Half of those who screened candidates via their social networking profiles said that they got a good feel for the person's personality and fit within the organization. Other employers said that they found the profiles supported the candidates' professional qualifications or that they discovered how creative the candidate was. Solid communication skills, evidence of well-roundedness, and other people's good references (we assume this one came from LinkedIn) helped boost people's credentials, too.

For most of us, it seems like common sense not to talk trash on your Facebook wall or post drunk pictures where potential employers can see them, but people are still catching up to the idea that their future bosses are on the same sites as they are. Anecdotally, I have worked at many an office that has casually looked up interns and new employees online, only to find sides of them that were less than flattering (one intern publicly declared that our company's parent company could "f-ing suck it!" immediately after we offered her the job).

Some may argue that employers shouldn't use information they found through a little bit of online stalking (something we've heard in our forums)—after all, what someone does after hours is his or her own business. At the same time, it's hard to deny that discovering truly alarming information—such as leaked workplace secrets—would be good cause for choosing another candidate. These days, everyone hunting for a job needs to exercise some judgment on what to post online and who they let access it if they want to stay in future employers' good graces.

Definition of "MISTAKE "

2009-08-03T23:09:00.003+08:00

MISTAKE

What they actually mean

If a barber makes a mistake,
It's a

New Style

If a driver makes a mistake,
It is a

New path

If a engineer makes a mistake,
It is a

New Venture

If parents makes a mistake,
It is a

New Generation

If a politician makes a mistake,
It is a

New Law

If a scientist makes a mistake,
It is a

New Invention

If a tailor makes a mistake,
It is a

New Fashion

If a teacher makes a mistake ,
It is a

New Theory

If our boss makes a mistake,
It is a

New idea

If an employee makes a mistake,
It is a
'Mistake'

long piak! (a.k.a. banging against the wall)

10 Safety Hazards You Should Check Your Car for -- Now

2009-07-01T02:58:00.001+08:00

10 Commonly Overlooked Auto Safety Issues

by Bobbi Dempsey
Wednesday, July 1, 2009provided by

As the weather gets nicer, people tend to spend more time in their cars and start to plan road trips or family getaways. You may have already done the routine springtime vehicle maintenance tasks, such as removing the snow tires. Perhaps you've even waxed the car thoroughly, replacing that grimy sludge and salt of winter with a glossy shine.

However, you may not necessarily be ready to hit the road just yet: You may be overlooking important safety issues. These issues can be costly -- not to mention dangerous -- if you don't take care of them immediately.

Here are our top 10 overlooked auto safety issues:

Missing air bags. A new report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, finds that nearly one in five fatal accidents involves cars with missing air bags. This is something that should concern anyone who has bought a previously owned car. Don't assume you're in the clear just because there are no signs of crash-related damage or repair work -- air bags can deploy as a result of low-speed collisions that may cause little or no damage. Check the vehicle's history using a service such as Carfax, or ask your mechanic to check for signs of prior air-bag deployment.

Compromised bumpers. If you've had any type of bump or collision, including a minor fender bender, or if you own a used car with an unknown past, this may be a concern. Even if bumpers look fine, they may not be OK. Joe Wiesenfelder, senior editor of Cars.com, says, "If your car has been rear-ended lightly or the bumpers were otherwise struck, have a mechanic or body shop check it out. Nowadays, most bumpers use a dense foam material to absorb impact, but they only work once. Even if they show no signs from the outside, the underlying structure may be compressed, which means the next mishap could cause greater injury and/or damage than the first one did."

Damaged or rusted brake lines. Brake lines can be vulnerable to rust and breakage. This is especially true if you live in an area with rough winters -- many of the chemicals used to treat roads contain corrosive chemicals that can damage brake lines. Unlike some other brake problems, damaged brake lines don't give telltale signs such as squealing or grinding. When checking your brake lines, look for puddles of leaking brake fluid. If you spot any holes or signs of rust damage, chances are there are other weak points, so it's probably best to replace the entire brake line.

"I would recommend a complete underbody inspection," says Marcus Simmons, president of the Motown Automotive Professionals nonprofit, a group that trains high school students for auto repair. "You want to be sure that the winter snow and ice have not caused any damage."

But this isn't just a winter problem. Brake lines and other undercar parts can rust or crack from exposure to rain or damp conditions, such as wet grass. Ask your mechanic about new types of brake lines that are said to be more resistant to chemicals and the elements.

Damaged headlight lenses. This can reduce your visibility, creating a hazard when you are driving at night or in bad weather. "Scars and scratches on plastic headlight lenses can be caused by slush, road salt, stones, etc.," says John Voelcker, a frequent contributor on auto topics for major magazines and a blogger on GreenCarReports.com. "Check for gouges, cracks or moisture inside the headlight that would indicate the seal has failed, which can make your light less bright and shorten the life of that (expensive) bulb inside."

Steering and suspension problems. Like brake lines, these parts are susceptible to corrosion and weather-related damage. Carchex spokesman and "MotorWeek" co-host Pat Goss says, "Make sure to check critical steering and suspension parts because harmful winter chemicals can migrate past seals and cause damage. Rough, pothole-ridden roads don't help, either."

Dying or damaged batteries. Seasonal changes can be a death sentence for weak batteries. Goss says, "Lots of drivers are conscious of checking car batteries in the fall, but it's also important to check them in the spring because any temperature extreme can push a weak battery over the edge."

Animal damage. During the winter, animals like to seek shelter from the elements, and you might be surprised to learn that the engine area of your car is a pretty inviting place. If your car has been sitting for an extended period of time, animals may have been hiding or nesting there for quite a while, without you even realizing it. Squirrels are the most common culprits, but any type of animal can cause problems. Look for stashes of leaves, twigs or nuts under your hood or near your car. This might be a red flag that animals have set up a winter home near your engine. If you discover this, you need to examine the wiring, hoses and other engine parts for signs of chewing or other animal damage.

Underinflated tires. Tires that aren't properly inflated are prone to blowouts and can also make the car harder to control. "Properly inflated tires can help improve gas mileage by 3 (percent) to 4 percent," says Ford spokesman Wes Sherwood.

Wiesenfelder agrees. "Tires can be underinflated even though they look fine, so be sure to check the pressure regularly. The recommended tire pressure will be listed on the driver's doorjamb, not on the tire itself. The tire pressure listed on the tire is (the) maximum pressure the tire can hold, not (the) recommended pressure. Be sure to follow the recommended pressure and to check the tires when cold," he says.

Cooling system problems. Unlike the air-conditioning system, which is mainly designed for passenger comfort, the cooling system is responsible for keeping your car's engine cool. That's important because an overheated engine can leave you stranded on the side of the road. "A properly functioning cooling system is critical to engine operation," says a Subaru of America spokesman. "It is recommended that the cooling system and hose connections be checked frequently for leaks, damage or loose connections."

Damaged drive belts/serpentine belts. These are parts you tend to forget about -- until they get your attention in a big way. "If the belt snaps, you could lose power steering, which results in a hard-to-steer vehicle; a water pump, resulting in overheating; or a nonfunctioning alternator that could stall the engine," says Wiesenfelder. "Have the belts inspected at the recommended intervals. When you go in for an oil change, the technician will typically look at these anyway, but be sure they are checked, especially on higher-mileage vehicles."

Copyrighted, Bankrate.com. All rights reserved.

source: 10 Safety Hazards You Should Check Your Car for -- Now

7 Myths About Marriage and Retirement

2009-04-15T22:57:00.001+08:00

by Kimberly Palmer
Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Think married couples have it easy? Or that you should get your pension policy to pay out as much as possible, as soon as possible? Well, think again. Predicting that you'll die too early--or too late--can leave you and your spouse in a financial crunch. New research upends these 7 common myths about marriage and retirement:

Single people need less money. It's true that that single people spend less money each year than couples, but at all ages over 65, they spend more of their income than couples do, according to research by Michael Hurd, senior economist at Rand. Then, after age 65, single people's income goes down by three percent a year until it dwindles to 20 percent of its starting value at age 95. (For those at age 65, the probability of surviving to age 95 is around 11 percent.) Couples, meanwhile, maintain their income until the oldest member reaches age 79, when wealth starts to decline at around 3 percent a year. (On average, couples start out with three times the wealth of single people.) So while single people may need less money, they also tend to be less prepared for retirement and spend down their savings much more quickly. (Hurd's calculations are based on data from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study.)

Married couples have less to worry about. While married couples do tend to enter retirement with greater resources than their single peers, there is a small chance that both members of the couple will survive to old age. According to Hurd, at age 65, the chances that both survive to age 77 is less than half. Once one spouse dies, the surviving spouse tends to spend down their joint wealth much more quickly. By age 95, on average the surviving spouse has just 32 percent of the couple's initial level of wealth.

The worst case scenario is unlikely to happen. A recent survey by AARP Financial found that many people find themselves financially unprepared when the worst case scenario does strike, which compounds the tragedy. The survey, which focused on adults between ages 40 and 79, found that most (57 percent) had already experienced such a crisis, including long-term job loss, divorce, and death of a spouse or partner. Of those who lost a spouse, 63 percent said it had a significant impact on their finances.

Women are especially likely to be widowed, and to run into money problems once they are. According to the Census Bureau, more than 1 in 4 women over age 55 are widows; the proportion rises to two in three for women who are 75 and older. Divorce is another risk factor: While 12 percent of all women over age 65 live in poverty, the rate for divorced women is 21 percent, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Thinking you'll die young--or live forever. Deciding how much to save and spend depends partly on how long you plan to live, a prediction many people get wrong. According to Hurd's research, between ages 65 and 69, people tend to think they'll die sooner than they actually will, which puts them at risk for over-spending. Then, over age 75, people tend to think they'll live longer than they will, which means they may be overly frugal. Women tend to underestimate their chances of living longer compared to men. Between ages 65 to 69, women tend to underestimate their chances of survival by 12 percentage points compared to men's four, Hurd says.

Getting as much money as possible, as early as possible, is best. Many people make the mistake of opting for higher payments from pension or other benefits payments during their lifetimes, which means their surviving spouses are left with less later. Mary McGrath, executive vice president at Cozad Asset Management, a financial planning firm in Champaign, Ill., says even couples with other assets should consider selecting an option that allows benefit payments to the surviving spouse after death, because suddenly losing all income adds unnecessary stress to the grieving process. "It's too upsetting to the survivor to have all of the income cease when you die," she says.

High-earners have less to worry about. While people who earn above-average income during their working lives tend to have acquired more resources than those who earn less, they also need more money in retirement in order to maintain their lifestyle. Hurd adds that another challenge for wealthier individuals is that they pay much heftier taxes, a factor many people forget to take into account.

Retirees should maintain their wealth until age 100. You can't go wrong saving too much, but Hurd says it's reasonable to look at more realistic survival rates. He defines a household as "adequately prepared" for retirement if it has a five percent or less chance of outliving its resources if it reduced its initial spending by 15 percent. By that definition, 83 percent of couples and 70 percent of single people are prepared.

Annuities are too expensive. Hurd says that more people should consider annuities as a way to ensure they maintain their wealth as they age. Annuities, or contracts with insurance companies that allow consumers to purchase a guaranteed income stream, tend to be under-used because people hesitate to pay a large lump sum now for a payout much later. "In my view, individuals are likely distrustful that the annuity will be there in 25 or 30 years when it is needed," says Hurd. But, he adds, "even partial annuitization would reduce the burden of managing the level of spending and the portfolio."

Singapore's foreign minister describes ASEAN escape on blog

2009-04-14T01:28:00.000+08:00

Blog post gives another perspective on the cancelled ASEAN summit in Thailand.
By Sumner Lemon
14 Apr 2009

SINGAPORE, 14 APRIL 2009 - Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs George Yeo described his evacuation from the cancelled ASEAN summit in a blog post on Monday, adding his personal perspective to media coverage of anti-government protests in Thailand.

The summit of Southeast Asian leaders, scheduled to be held in Pattaya, Thailand, was cancelled on Saturday after supporters of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, known as Red Shirts, broke through a police cordon and made their way into the Royal Cliff Beach Resort Hotel where the meetings were to be held. The Red Shirt protests later expanded to Bangkok, where they continue to clash with Thai soldiers and police who are trying to restore order.

According to Yeo, ministers attending the Pattaya summit saw few indications of serious trouble until early Saturday, when Red Shirt protesters, demanding the resignation of Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, blocked the route of the Chinese delegation headed to the hotel for meetings. But even then there was no sign the summit would be cancelled, until lunch when protesters broke through the security cordon.

"Having arrived at the restaurant for lunch early, I was waiting for other ministers when hundreds of soldiers with plastic shields streamed in on the far side of the swimming pool. I decided to go out to take some pictures," Yeo wrote in the blog post carried on the Beyond.sg Web site.

A picture posted on Beyond.sg shows Yeo in a suit, smiling and looking relaxed, while a few dozen Thai soldiers march behind him. Tourists can be seen lazing by the hotel pool, also unfazed by the events unfolding around them.

"I was assured that the soldiers were only having a lunch break. Only later did I find out that the red shirts had broken through the gates and were moving in to occupy the conference center nearby," he wrote.

Shortly afterwards, ministers were informed that the summit had been cancelled and were told to return to their hotel rooms and pack their belongings for an evacuation.

"PM was told by the Thai Government that he and the Singapore delegation should evacuate by sea, to be ferried by small boats to a nearby [naval vessel] which would take us to Sattahip naval base," Yeo wrote, referring to Prime Minister Lee Hsien-Loong.

"It all seemed quite unseemly to me that leaders and ministers had to leave in this way. But anyway we packed our belongings and waited for instructions since the Thais were responsible for our security," Yeo wrote. "Happily we were informed around 3.30 pm that the demonstrators had dispersed and we could travel by road to U-Tapao with full dignity."

Once the Singaporean delegation arrived at U-Tapao International Airport, they boarded a Singaporean air force transport plane that carried them home and away from the protesters.

"As we boarded the RSAF Fokker transport aircraft, it all seemed like a bad dream. But for the Thais, the nightmare continues," Yeo wrote.

Singapore SMEs not prepared for disaster

2009-04-13T01:32:00.000+08:00

Business continuity preparation needs to move beyond just IT hardware and data centricity.
By Gerald Wee
13 Apr 2009

SINGAPORE, 13 APRIL 2009 – Many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore see the need for business continuity and have taken a number of steps towards mitigating business impact should disaster strike. However, company perceptions of what constitutes adequate business continuity preparations are still not holistic enough, and tend to focus on information systems and electronic data.

According to a research group AMI Partners study, of medium-sized businesses in Singapore, 96 per cent of respondents to a survey on business continuity believe that disasters such as fires (44 per cent), utility outages (17 per cent), epidemics (12 per cent), terrorist attacks (8 per cent), and cyber threats (8 per cent) will impact their organisations.

“About 71 per cent of the respondents have a trained business continuity management team, and this does make it seem that companies are well-prepared for business continuity and disaster recovery,” said Daniel Sim, manager, SMB Consulting & Research, AMI Partners. “Confidence that implementation will work ranked 7.1 on a scale of one to 10.”

Gaps in readiness

While the numbers seem to bode well for Singapore, Sim noted that further probing in the survey identified gaps in readiness.

“Most of the respondents were from the IT department, and although they may be familiar with some standards like BS7799 and ITIL which are information technology-based, the broader TR19 standard for business continuity management was never mentioned. This means that the total business impact on the company tends to be under-estimated,” said Sim.

“There is a lot of misinterpretation in business continuity,” said Wong Tew Kiat, BCP leader, NCS. “It is moving away from just IT and systems towards people and business critical departments.”

He cited the example of Deutsche Bank which had a business continuity plan in place, and when the World Trade Center disaster struck in New York City in 2001, only two, out of more than 5,000 employees, died.

SARS epidemic

In Singapore, Wong also noted that the SARs epidemic in 2003 was also about people, not IT systems.

“Part of the equation is having available seats, not just computers,” he said. “Having alternative centres is important.”

“I want to say that IT disaster recovery does not equal business continuity management,” Wong added. “It is very much about people, and what people need to do to continue business.”

The study also found that another main obstacle towards being ready in case of disaster is finances as some 50 per cent of respondents in some industries do not have the resources to implement such a programme which can be substantial, ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on requirements.

Singapore fund

The good news is that the Singapore government has set up a S$30 million (US$19.7 million) fund to help local companies get ready.

“Up to 70 per cent of the consultation and auditing costs needed to implement a business continuity programme can be covered,” said Roland Teo, deputy director, capacity building division, Singapore Business Federation, which is responsible for helping companies access the fund.

Ultimately, how much is spent on business continuity depends on the impact of a disaster on the company.

“After the business impact analysis is done, an organisation will be able to better assess its own needs and make a better decision,” said Wong.

Singapore e-payment provider to debut contactless debit card

2009-04-13T01:30:00.000+08:00

New card will allow stored value top-ups to be done at most payment terminals
By Melissa Chua
13 Apr 2009

SINGAPORE, 13 APRIL 2009 – Singapore’s electronics payment provider Network for Electronic Transfers (better known as NETS), has announced plans to launch a contactless stored value payment card which allows for automatic cash value top-ups.

The new card, which can be used to pay for road tolls, public transport fares, retail purchases and bills, is expected to provide greater convenience to consumers in Singapore who hold deposit accounts in DBS Bank, Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), United Overseas Bank (UOB) and Standard Chartered Bank.

NETS’s current stored value card offering, the cashcard, is not contactless, does not allow for automatic top-ups, and cannot be used to pay for public transport.

Anytime, anywhere

According to NETS, the stored value of the new contactless card can be topped up, with money debited from the consumers’ bank account, anytime a transaction is performed.

Top-ups can be performed at retail points with the entering of a personal identification number (or PIN). Consumers who wish to have their cards automatically topped up at other payment points, such as road gantries, will need to apply at their bank for the feature to be enabled.

Small value payments

The new contactless payment card will also be used for what the company terms ‘small value payments’, meaning payment amounts which fall below S$20 (US$13.18). Selected snack shops, food courts and hawker centres around the island have been equipped with the contactless payment terminals. Consumers need only enter a PIN in order for a transaction to be performed.

NETS is currently looking to sign up more retail outlets for such a service.

Transport

NETS CEO, Poh Mui Hoon, expects the new contactless card to capture about 50 per cent of the public transport fare payment market, currently dominated by competitor EZ-Link.

The new contactless payment card will go on trial in May, limited to a select group of consumers. A larger trial in July will determine when the card will become publicly available.

Maxis, Visa goes live with mobile NFC payments

2009-04-13T01:29:00.000+08:00

Apr 13, 2009
By Telecom Asia Staff
telecomasia.net

Malaysian operator Maxis has launched the world’s first commercial mobile payments service for point-of-sale transactions using Visa’s payWave service based on Near Field Communications (NFC) technology.

The new service, branded Maxis FastTap and offered in conjunction with Visa and Maybank, is compatible with just one handset, a Nokia 6212 classic with an embedded NFC chipset.

Maybank Visa account holders can download their Visa payWave credit account details directly to the handset over the Maxis network. Payments can then be made by waving the handset in front of a payWave contactless reader.

Visa says 1,800 merchant outlets currently accept Visa payWave in Malaysia.

Customers can also use FastTap to pay for toll, transit, parking and theme park charges at over 3,000 Touch ‘n Go points nationwide. The Nokia 6212 comes preloaded with RM10 ($2.75) worth of Touch ‘n Go credit.

Visa has a number of pilot projects for mobile versions of its contactless payWave system around the world, including one announced earlier this month in Singapore with cellco M1 and Citibank, which kicks off next month. MasterCard also has several trials with the mobile version of its PayPass contactless service.

However, while contactless mobile payments have been a hit in Japan, which uses Sony’s FeliCa technology, similar services based on NFC have been slow to gain traction, due to the complexity of the ecosystem involved, competing standards (which means multiple card readers for merchants), security concerns and lack of support from device manufacturers.

The GSM Association has sought to accelerate NFC-based mobile payments through its Pay Buy Mobile initiative, which defines the specs for a UICC (Universal Integrated Circuit Card) that allows the SIM to securely host payment apps.

However, the first handsets supporting UICC aren’t expected to become available until 2010, according to a Maxis spokesperson who confirmed that the Maxis FastTap service will migrate to UICC once it’s commercially available.

Meanwhile, the expectations for NFC payments have become mixed in recent months. Last month, ABI Research practice director Dan Shey declared mobile NFC payments a “failure” in terms of a viable business model, and that SMS, mobile Internet and downloadable mobile applications will dominate mobile payments for the foreseeable future, generating $1.6 billion in transactions globally this year.

FCC to Handle Privacy, Net Neutrality

2009-04-06T00:21:00.000+08:00

By Kenneth Corbin
April 6, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Few tech policy debates are plumped up with more rhetoric than those concerning Net neutrality and privacy restrictions for advertisers. It should be a noisy year at the Federal Communications Commission.

Here at the Cable Show, the annual conference hosted by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, advisors to the three current commissioners outlined some of the simmering issues that are likely to boil up at the FCC this year, and those two are on the short list.

Rick Chessen, acting chief of staff for interim FCC Chairman Michael Copps, said the agency could move toward adding to its Internet policy statement a fifth principle that would explicitly bar ISPs from discriminating against certain traffic on their networks.

"The principle would be one of nondiscrimination, but you would recognize the need for reasonable network management," Chessen said.

The FCC's broadband principles comprised the policy document that was at the center of last year's action against Comcast, where the agency found that the cable giant had unfairly blocked peer-to-peer traffic on its network without notifying its subscribers it was doing so. The new principle Chessen suggested would seek to clarify the agency's stance against the selective blocking of traffic.

Comcast is challenging last year's ruling in a court case where the outcome could broadly shape how Congress proceed with Net neutrality policy.

Rosemary Harold, the legal advisor to Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell, said her boss is more cautious than the two Democrats on the matter.

"He's on a different page," Harold said. "He doesn't think at this point there's a need to move forward before we get some guidance from the court." McDowell voted against the motion to punish Comcast in August.

At the moment, the FCC is in shape-shifting mode thanks to the post-election bureaucratic shuffle in Washington. With the departures of two Republican commissioners, the five-person agency is down to three.

Of those, Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein has been appointed to head the Rural Utilities Service, a division of the Department of Agriculture, and Copps will only head the agency until Obama's pick for chairman, Julius Genachowski, is confirmed by the Senate.

As a practical matter, Chessen said the commission wouldn't take any actions to shore up its position on Net neutrality until the new leadership was in place.

Aside from the staffing upheaval, the commission also has some more pressing issues than Net neutrality on its plate. Chief among them is the transition to digital television set for June 12.

The commission is also deeply involved in the broadband portion of the economic stimulus package, serving as a technical advisor to the agencies that will be dispersing the $7.2 billion for new networks and other projects. The bill also directs the FCC to develop and report to Congress a comprehensive national broadband strategy by next February.

But the cable folks on hand for the show may have already heard enough about that. From the outset, today's panel was designed as a welcome break from the steady drumbeat of discussions on the disposition of the stimulus grants.

For the FCC to wade into the privacy debate would be a bit of a departure. The Federal Trade Commission has generally run herd on questions about how much personal information Web companies should be able to collect, store and sell.

While the FCC isn't likely to get into the weeds about whether IP address should be considered personally identifiable information or how tracking cookies should be properly handled, Chessen suggested that it could become more active in the broader privacy debate that is expected to spill into other types of media.

"I think it's been a sleeper issue for a while," he said. "At the FCC it may be the online stuff, but it may also be interactive television."

Interactive television is one of those technologies whose hype preceded its fruition by many years. Today, firms like TiVo are still tinkering with advertising and e-commerce applications for the television, and the Internet-enabled living room is still a long way off for most households.

But things are changing. Friday morning at the NCTA show, the CEO of Canoe Ventures talked up his company's progress in bringing new, data-rich advertising technology that promises to target TV ads to the viewers most likely to be interested in a model very similar to the behavioral targeting already in wide use on the Web today.

And with data-driven ad targeting comes concerns over consumer privacy, which, in the case of the television industry, could be red meat for the FCC.

"It hasn't really happened with television yet, but I think we're going to get there," Chessen said.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com.

Dr Lee Wei Ling - Why I choose to remain single

2009-04-05T23:50:00.000+08:00

Sun, Apr 05, 2009 - The Straits Times

My parents have a loving relationship, but I knew I could not live my life around a husband
By Lee Wei Ling

My father became prime minister in 1959, when I was just four years old. Inevitably, most people know me as Lee Kuan Yew’s daughter.

My every move, every word, is scrutinised and sometimes subject to criticism. One friend said I lived in a glass house. After my father’s recent comment on my lack of culinary skills, another observed: ‘You live in a house without any walls.’ Fortunately, I am not easily embarrassed.

As long as my conscience is clear, what other people say of me does not bother me. Indeed, I am open about my life since the more I try to conceal from the public, the wilder the speculation becomes.

My father said of my mother two weeks ago: ‘My wife was…not a traditional wife. She was educated, a professional woman… We had Ah Mahs, reliable, professional, dependable. (My wife) came back every lunchtime to have lunch with the children.’

Actually, my mother was a traditional wife and mother. She was not traditional only in one respect: She was also a professional woman and, for many years, the family’s main breadwinner.

One of my mother’s proudest possessions is a gold pendant that my father commissioned for her. He had a calligrapher engrave on the pendant the following characters: ‘xian qi liang mu’ and ‘nei xian wai de’.

The first four characters mean virtuous wife and caring mother. The second four mean wise in looking after the family, virtuous in behaviour towards the outside world.

My mother lived her life around my father and, while we were young, around her children. I remember my mother protesting gently once about something my father had asked her to do.

‘It is a partnership, dear,’ my father urged.

‘But it is not an equal partnership,’ my mother replied.

The partnership may not have been exactly equal at particular points in time. But over the years, especially after my mother’s health deteriorated after she suffered a stroke, my father was the one who took care of her. She clearly indicated she preferred my father’s care to that of the doctors’, in itself a revelation of the quality of his care.

He remembers her complicated regime of medications. Because she cannot see on the left side of her visual field, he sits on her left during meals. He prompts her to eat the food on the left side of her plate and picks up whatever food her left hand drops on the table.

I have always admired my father for his dedication to Singapore, his determination to do what is right, his courage in standing up to foreigners who try to tell us how to run our country.

But my father was also the eldest son in a typical Peranakan family. He cannot even crack a soft-boiled egg - such things not being expected of men, especially eldest sons, in Peranakan families.

But when my mother’s health deteriorated, he readily adjusted his lifestyle to accommodate her, took care of her medications and lived his life around her. I knew how much effort it took him to do all this, and I was surprised that he was able to make the effort.

If my parents have such a loving relationship, why then did I decide to remain single?

Firstly, my mother set the bar too high for me. I could not envisage being the kind of wife and mother she had been.

Secondly, I am temperamentally similar to my father. Indeed, he once said to me: ‘You have all my traits - but to such an exaggerated degree that they become a disadvantage in you.’

When my father made that pendant for my mother, he also commissioned one for me. But the words he chose for me were very different from those he chose for my mother.

On one side of my pendant was engraved ‘yang jing xu rui’, which means to conserve energy and build up strength. On the other side was engraved ‘chu lei ba cui’, which means to stand out and excel.

The latter was added just for completion. His main message was in the first phrase, telling me, in effect, not to be so intense about so many things in life.

I knew I could not live my life around a husband; nor would I want a husband to live his life around me. Of course, there are any number of variations in marital relationships between those extremes. But there is always a need for spouses to change their behaviour or habits to suit each other. I have always been set in my ways and did not fancy changing my behaviour or lifestyle.

I had my first date when I was 21 years old. He was a doctor in the hospital ward I was posted to. We went out to a dinner party. I noted that the other guests were all rich socialites. I dropped him like a hot potato.

In 2005, while on an African safari with a small group of friends, one of them, Professor C.N. Lee, listed the men who had tried to woo me. There were three besides the first. Two were converted into friends and another, like the first, was dropped.

I am now 54 years old and happily single. In addition to my nuclear family, I have a close circle of friends. Most of my friends are men. But my reputation is such that their female partners would never consider me a threat.

More than 10 years ago, when there was still a slim chance I might have got married, my father told me: ‘Your mother and I could be selfish and feel happy that you remain single and can look after us in our old age. But you will be lonely.’

I was not convinced. Better one person feeling lonely than two people miserable because they cannot adapt to each other, I figured.

I do not regret my choice. But I want to end with a warning to young men and women: What works for me may not work for others.

Many years ago, a young single woman asked me about training in neurology in a top US hospital. I advised her to ‘grab the opportunity’.

She did and stayed away for eight years. She returned to Singapore in her late 30s and now worries that she may have missed her chance to get married.

Fertility in women drops dramatically with age, and older mothers run the risk of having offspring with congenital abnormalities.

Recent studies show also that advanced paternal age is associated with an increased risk of neuro developmental disorders in offspring, such as autism and schizophrenia, not to mention dyslexia and a subtle reduction in intelligence. Men can also suffer from diminished fertility with age although there is wide individual variation.

I would advise young men and women not to delay getting married and having children. I say this not to be politically correct. I say it in all sincerity because I have enjoyed a happy family life as a daughter and a sister, and I see both my brothers enjoying their own families.

Dr Lee Wei Ling
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

Senate Gets Cybersecurity Bill

2009-04-03T00:24:00.000+08:00

By Kenneth Corbin
April 3, 2009

Two key senators announced on Wednesday a sweeping bill to reorganize the government's approach to cybersecurity operations, calling for a more effective partnership with private industry to protect the nation's digital infrastructure.

John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, joined with Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, to bring forward legislation that aims to consolidate and strengthen the government's much-maligned approach to defending against cyberattacks.

"We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs -- from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records -- the list goes on," Rockefeller said in a statement announcing the bill. "It's an understatement to say that cybersecurity is one of the most important issues we face. The increasingly connected nature of our lives only amplifies our vulnerability to cyberattacks and we must act now."

The outline of the bill closely resembles the recommendations of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank focused on security policy which late last year issued a report calling on the incoming administration to establishing an office responsible for cybersecurity within the White House, headed by someone with the president's ear.

Obama has sent signals that he might do just that, saying in his policy agenda that he planned to create a new federal position to oversee the government's digital defenses. The Rockefeller-Snowe bill would write that job into law, installing a National Cybersecurity Advisor in the Executive Office of the White House who would report directly to the president.

In February, Obama commissioned a thorough review of the government's cybersecurity operations, tapping Melissa Hathaway, a former intelligence official in the Bush administration, to head the process. Hathaway's review is due to be completed in about a week.

The new legislation adopts another key recommendation of the CSIS report in calling for more effective partnerships between government and the private sector.

Among other things, it would create a clearinghouse where government agencies and private firms could share information about cyberthreats and vulnerabilities.

It would also direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a division of the Commerce Department, to establish baseline, enforceable cybersecurity standards that would be applicable to both businesses and government entities. The bill would create a licensing program for cybersecurity professionals, as well as an advisory panel comprised of experts in all areas of the field to advise the president.

In an attempt to cultivate talent in the field, the legislation calls for a university-level cybersecurity scholarship program, with graduates to be placed in jobs at government agencies. The bill would also boost funding for cybersecurity research at the National Science Foundation.

It would also require a comprehensive review of the existing legal structures underpinning cyberdefenses, with an eye toward balancing security with civil liberties.

Ultimately, the bill aims to lay the groundwork for a coordinated national cybersecurity strategy, which would include an ambitious program to educate the public about the threats.

The bill would require the National Cybersecurity Advisor to conduct a thorough review every four years to examine the government's strategies, policies and budget requirements.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com.

Conficker: Did all The Hype Help?

2009-04-02T00:22:00.000+08:00

By Sean Michael Kerner
April 2, 2009

Conficker -- the malicious worm expected to activate today -- did not cause widespread computer meltdowns around the globe.

But considering that Microsoft patched the flaw five months ago, it's not clear why Conficker ever became a concern to begin with.

So why was it an issue -- and will it be an issue again?

The rise of Conficker, as an event and as a media phenomenon, has as much to do with user inaction as it does with the actual threat posed by the worm itself. The Conficker worm is proof positive of the fact that despite security updates and media reports, users can be the weak link in the security ecosystem unless motivated to action.

"Unfortunately the majority of the work that we are doing now is unnecessary if we had reacted quicker in the first place, patching immediately after the fix was released," Wolfgang Kandek, Qualys's CTO, told InternetNews.com. "The delay in applying the patch has lead to this widespread problem with millions of machines infected, and is something that we, the industry and the users, have to address."

Fortunately, while many users didn't patch for Conficker early on, all the media hype surrounding the April 1 activation date may have had a positive impact on mitigating risk.

"It doesn't look like anything will happen today," Matt Watchinski, senior director of the vulnerability research team at IPS (define) vendor SourceFire, told InternetNews.com. "That doesn't mean nothing won't happen tomorrow. Since there is so much information out there about detecting Conficker, scanning for Conficker, etc., I'd say the hype around April 1st had some positive impact on decreasing the number of infected nodes. Even if it was a so-called 'bust.'"

SourceFire is the commercial vendor behind the popular, open source SNORT IPS. SNORT is used to detect and intercept malicious traffic, and it can be used to identify Conficker-related traffic. Networking giant Cisco also told InternetNews.com that it was using its own IPS tools to help identify and protect against any Conficker-related activities.

Domain registry vendors also stepped up to help in curbing the risks of Conficker. The worm uses the domain name system as part of its command-and-control network, but top-level domain (TLD) operator Afilias told InternetNews.com that it had fought back by blocking some 300,000 domain names to date.

The worm, and the reaction to it, has offered some lessons for the industry, according to Afilias, a member of the Conficker Working Group -- a group of TLD operators, industry leaders like Microsoft and ICANN, and security researchers.

"Conficker has continued to evolve since it was first identified," Heather Read, senior director for communications at Afilias, told InternetNews.com. "We believe this is the first worm of this scale targeting domain names in such a public and massive way."

"The response of registry providers and country code domain administrators has been overwhelming and proves the responsiveness of the Conficker Working Group," she added. "The industry should begin thinking ahead to how to better coordinate to respond to Conficker-like attacks."

While technology like IPS and the efforts of domain registries are positive themes in the Conficker storyline, the reality is that Conficker -- though it's yet to prove to be a doomsday worm -- still exists and likely will for some time to come.

After all, older worms that have long since faded from the headline still persist.

"We still get IDS/IPS events for SQL Slammer, which is more than five years old at this point," SourceFire's Watchinski said. "If that's any indication, I'm assuming Conficker won't be stamped out completely for a long, long time."

This article was first published on InternetNews.com.

NSS Labs report touting the benefits of IE8?

2009-03-23T23:50:00.002+08:00

Can you trust the NSS Labs report touting the benefits of IE8?
by Steve Ragan - Mar 23 2009, 16:15

NSS Labs report used to tout the benefits of Internet Explorer 8. Image: Microsoft.

On Thursday, as Microsoft pushed out Internet Explorer 8 to the masses, a report by NSS Labs was making the rounds in the news. The report says that Internet Explorer 8 blocks two to four times as many malicious Web sites as any of the other browsers on the market today. Yet, the news online surrounding this report is misleading to say the least, and the report itself appears biased and questionable at best.

According to an IE8 press releases, Microsoft said: “...91 percent of adults in the U.S. are concerned about online fraud and identity theft in today’s economic climate, and 37 percent are less likely to shop online because they would have to give their personal information. Internet Explorer 8 offers the best security protections

among leading browsers: a study released today by NSS Labs indicates that Internet Explorer 8 blocks two to four times as many malicious sites as other browsers on the market today.”

The NSS Labs report shows that IE8 is effective on its own 69 percent of the time when dealing with socially-engineered Malware. Firefox

v3.07 earned a 30 percent effectiveness rate, while Safari (v.3) earned 24 percent, Google’s Chrome (v. 1.0.154) earned 16 percent, Opera (v. 9.64) earned 5 percent, and IE7 earned 4 percent.

However, the results are far from conclusive. There were only 492 sites tested in the first place, a rather small testing sample. In addition, the test relied on standard protections offered by the browser, depending on the browser used; no two will have the exact same set of default protections.

In addition, the report itself is suspect as it is funded by Microsoft. Funding aside, the timing of the report and the breakdown of testing is something that one needs to take a long hard look at.

NSS Labs started with a set of more than 1,779 URLs, which it ultimately narrowed down to a testing set of just 492 sites. These sites were confirmed, by manual testing, to be malicious. Yet, not a single tested URL is presented for comparison. This lack of peer-review opportunity leads some to argue the NSS test was completely biased.

The NSS test used two points to grade the tested browsers. A browser would pass if it blocked the Malware from being downloaded and issued a warning. Failure means that there was no warning and the Malware downloaded and installed. The sites tested, all 492 of them, were related to “socially engineered Malware,” meaning the site that hosted the Malware often finds its victims from Phishing or other Social Engineering attacks.

Yet, at no time does the NSS report take into account layered security, it does not mention the add-ons or options available for Opera, Firefox, or Safari, each of which scored poorly on the test. For example, Firefox alone offers various add-ons for layered security, Opera and Safari both have extensive options for layered defense that are configured by the user for protection. None of these extras were tested.

With regard to the size of the sample set, there is no clear answer as to why it was so small. Millions of Phishing sites host or link to “socially engineered Malware”. Relying on a test set as small as the one used by NSS offers a slanted test at worse, or at best inconclusive results. There is just no way to fairly test each of the browsers without including all of their features or, in the case of Firefox, the most popular and recommended add-ons, and letting the test access several thousand sites -- if not more.

Moreover, Safari’s score should not be counted; this is because a new version of Safari was released before the NSS Labs test. Safari 4 was released to the public on February 24, 2009. NSS Labs says that it conducted its testing from February 26 to March 10, 2009. Why then, would it intentionally pick the older browser when testing features against those of Internet Explorer 8?

Layered security, which was neither discussed nor tested in the NSS study, is the ultimate lesson to be learned. Each tested browser has a different set of default security features. Thanks to various control options and add-ons, each one of them will secure the end user differently. The only way to protect the victim from “socially engineered Malware” is to ensure they are covered with layers.

In most of the cases where a browser failed the test by NSS, anti-Virus software or other added features to a browser could have prevented exploitation. However, the lack of published URLs used in testing makes this point impossible to prove.

However, in the past, layered security has proven time and time again to be the best defense; things like NoScript for Firefox, the use of the block lists by Opera, anti-Virus integration in Safari, or sandboxing by Chrome, offer various layers of protection for the end user. None of these features are listed in the NSS report as being tested. If they were tested, why is there no breakdown on the results?

Perhaps it is unwise to use a test you paid for as proof of why your browser is better than those of your rivals. In an interview last week, Microsoft said it hopes we (the users) will look past the sponsorship issues. Yet, how can we? It is impossible not to question them, considering the testing methods and the hands-down victory that IE8 obtained as a result.

The test in itself would have been better if there had been more time spent testing malicious URLs, and the layered abilities of the browsers were taken into account with the results documented. Something else that would have added value is the ability to re-create the test outside of the environment used by NSS.

The published results, paid for and used by Microsoft, can be read here.

Even in the US, some believe that giving up a bit of freedom can serve the greater good

2009-03-22T23:42:00.001+08:00

By Lee Wei Ling

Someone e-mailed me an article from the San Francisco Chronicle titled 'Singapore blooms as lush as Eden itself', by Linda Watanabe McFerrin, about our city in a garden.

'Unfortunately, what most Westerners know about Singapore,' she notes, 'is limited to the restrictions imposed on its citizens by a repressive government that dictates the mix of races; regulates reproductive matters, public housing and other seemingly personal matters; bans chewing gum, canes kids and keeps a stranglehold on the media.'

I read the article with amusement and recalled the day Michael Fay saved me from being thrown into jail in New Hampshire. For those too young to remember Fay, let me relate his story.

In 1993, the then 18-year-old and his friends damaged 18 cars in a 10-day spree of vandalism and mischief. Stolen road signs and Singapore flags were also found in his home. Fay was caught, charged and pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced him to six strokes of the cane and four months in jail.

The American media went berserk; then US President Bill Clinton appealed to then President Ong Teng Cheong to pardon the teenager; the Singapore Government agreed to reduce the sentence to four strokes of the rotan; the US media was not satisfied.

At the time of his arrest in Singapore, Fay was living with his mother and stepfather. On his release from prison in June 1994, he returned to the US to live with his father.

A few months later, the US press reported that he had come home intoxicated late one night and had charged at his father. A month later, he was badly burnt sniffing butane when a friend struck a match.

He admitted that he had been a butane addict while in Singapore.

Fay was far from my mind when I spent three wonderful days hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in October 1995.

It was fall and the mountains were covered with red, yellow, rust and gold foliage with tiny flecks of green - a work of art which no human painter can ever equal either in magnitude or splendour.

Just before heading back to Boston, I stopped at a tiny souvenir shop. I bought a sweatshirt with a moose printed on it for my mother.

I then saw a T-shirt with the New Hampshire state emblem, the head of an eagle, and the words 'Live Free or Die' printed around the emblem.

I have always avoided wearing anything which makes a statement. But I could not resist buying this T-shirt. Then I hit the highway again, heading for Boston.

The highways in America are wonderful. They are multiple-lane affairs, with a physical separation between the traffic going in opposite directions. This makes speeding on them safer than in Singapore.

Soon, I was cruising at 195kmh with Scottish music playing at full blast in the background.

Because of the loud music, it took me some time before I noticed a police siren and slowed down.

With its red, white and blue lights flashing, the police car overtook my vehicle and signalled for me to pull over. I did so and the police car stopped ahead of me.

The policeman walked over to my car, demanded to see my driving licence, then yanked me out, saying: 'I am bringing you to the police station to be locked up.'

I protested: 'I was only speeding. I will pay the fine and you should let me off.'

He shot back: 'You were not only speeding. You disobeyed the law by not stopping immediately when I flashed the light to signal you to stop.'

He shoved me into his car and drove off, leaving my rental car by the roadside with all my belongings, including my newly purchased T-shirts, in it and the car door still open.

He radioed back to the police station, saying he was bringing someone in to the lock-up.

'What do you work as?' he asked me.

I replied: 'I am a doctor.'

'I hope you are a better doctor than a driver. Are you on drugs?'

'No. Do I look as though I am on drugs?'

'No, you look as though you were concentrating on overtaking every car ahead of you.'

That was indeed what I was doing. How often in Singapore can one drive at 195kmh? But I chose not to voice that thought.

Suddenly he asked: 'What do Singaporeans think of Americans?'

I replied quite sincerely: 'We like Americans. Hewlett-Packard, IBM and other multinational companies create jobs for us. But you probably don't like Singaporeans because we caned Michael Fay.'

His whole demeanour changed when I mentioned Fay.

'Michael Fay deserved to be caned,' he said firmly. 'He has been causing trouble since he returned to the US.'

He told me how his best friend, also a policeman, had been shot point-blank and died that morning when he stopped a speeding car. That was why he was in such a foul mood.

From that point on, our conversation got friendlier. We talked about hiking in New Hampshire, how we drove on the left in Singapore and so on.

Without my realising it, he had turned around and had driven back to where my rental car was. A tow truck had just arrived, but my policeman shooed it away.

He walked me to my car, told me to 'drive safely' and walked off. He did not fine me, nor did he charge me for activating the tow truck.

I drove back to Boston hardly believing my good luck.

American journalists may flog Singapore because of its perceived limitations on personal freedom, but there are some Americans - even in 'Live Free or Die' New Hampshire - who feel that a compromise in personal freedom to prevent anti-social behaviour is necessary for the welfare of society.

Most Singaporeans and many Americans would agree with that sentiment.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute. Send your comments to suntimes@sph.com.sg

Windows 7: Microsoft's first 'post-Gates' OS

2009-03-20T23:37:00.000+08:00

Microsoft proud of its first 'post-Gates' OS, Ballmer says

Gates' departure allowed executives to take new leadership responsibilities while developing Windows 7
By Elizabeth Montalbano
20 Mar 2009

NEW YORK, 19 MARCH 2009 - Windows 7 is the first Microsoft OS developed away from the watchful eye of Bill Gates, and the technical leaders who built it had to adjust to life at the company without its cofounder and former chief software architect, CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday.

"We have a lot of people who are stepping up and growing in new ways," Ballmer said, speaking at the McGraw-Hill 2009 Media Summit in New York. "There's no question about that. I'm growing in some new ways. Some of the senior technical guys are growing in new ways. "

Windows 7, which is expected to be out later this year, is a product of some of the changes that have taken place since Gates left, and Microsoft is proud of the result, he said in an on-stage interview conducted by BusinessWeek Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler.

"It's a great piece of work," Ballmer said. "And it's a piece of work that was driven by a team ... independent of Bill and his leadership. And I think we're all, you know, feeling pretty good about it. We've got to finish it. But I think it'll be a big, big deal."

Indeed, Windows 7, a beta release of which is available, has already received positive reviews from early users. Its predecessor, Windows Vista, took more than five years for Microsoft to develop and was received poorly by many businesses and consumers.

Without saying so explicitly, Ballmer hinted that he and colleagues were limited in their ability to make certain technical decisions at Microsoft while Gates was there. Gates left his day-to-day duties at Microsoft last July to work full time with the philanthropic organization he formed with his wife,The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie share Gates' former responsibilities.

Ballmer said the "number-one thing" that's changed at the company is the way he, Ozzie and Mundie interact as a team to make technology decisions. "The way the three of us accomplish, let me call it the job at the center of technology leadership, is certainly different than the way Bill did," he said.

Gates, on the other hand, had more of the final say himself in technical decisions, Ballmer said.

"He was the founder. I might have been the CEO, but he was 'the Bill,'" he said. "There was no question that if Bill thought something should be done ... he actually didn't give orders much, but if he thought something should be done, you knew life would be intense if you didn't agree. Let me say it that way."

Still, he said, given the choice, Ballmer and his colleagues would be happy to have Gates back.

"We miss Bill," he said. "I mean, if you gave sort of the average senior technical person at Microsoft a vote, 'Bill back, Bill not back,' they'd probably say, 'Yeah, it'd be great to have Bill back.' On the other hand, Bill's doing something important that everybody values, and I think everybody relishes the opportunity to grow and take more responsibility."

Ballmer declined to say when Windows 7 would be available, saying only that the company would release it "when it's ready." The official word from Microsoft is that Windows 7 will ship three years after Windows Vista, which was released to business customers in November 2006 and to the general public in January 2007.

State of the CIO 2009

2009-03-12T22:01:00.001+08:00

State of the CIO 2009

By FmMonteverde

Created 12/03/2009 - 2:46am

By Chee Sing Chan and Emily Chia | Mar 12, 2009 |

The CIO role by nature will always be dynamic and evolving. Technology itself develops at a searing pace leaving slowmovers cliaging to the coattails of pioneers and groundbreakers.

As such CIOs must be constantly re-evaluating their priorities and objectives to ensure they are delivering the maximum value that technology can deliver to the business?

So what does it take to be a successful CIO today? Is the role being diminished as som e argue or has it in fact been elevated to another status, one which finally lays to rest the perception of a back office cable-pulling software programmer.

According to a recent report by CIO Connect, a professional peer network for CIOs, "CIO leadership is all about keeping ahead of executive and user demands." The report further adds that for modern and relevant CIOs, "it is all about driving new attitudes and behaviors in the organization. And it is all about delivering increased levels of business value."

Kim Eng Securities CIO, Tony Tay, noted that the role of the CIO has clearly evolved from a more CTO in nature to one that is more business-oriented.

"CIOs have had to learn to align IT to business and be forced to upgrade themselves to step into the business realm," said Kim.

To enable IT to effectively drive business, he recommends IT heads to engage in the industry and be ahead of user demands.

Cream of the crop

CIO Connect brings together CIOs and technology leaders in UK and Europe with a growing Asian membership to develop thought leadership and best practice sharing within its members.

Its annual CIO Horizons study of over 100 key CIOs highlights the attitudes and attributes of successful CIOs and includes for the first time CIOs from Asia Pacific.

The study identifies leading CIOs as vanguard CIOs - those who are seen as setting the benchmark for high performing CIOs and are taking an active leadership role within the organization.

Published in November 2008, the report notes that leadership at the top of an organization depends on relationships first and foremost, and the vanguard CIOs are spending more of their time with their colleagues in the business compared to the rest. This gives these CIOs a unique breadth of oversight of their organization and an unparalleled and invaluable perspective in the current downturn.

These vanguard CIOs spend on average 27% of their time in formal and informal discussions with fellow CxOs compared to other CIO counterparts - referred to as "core" CIOs. (See chart 1)

Core CIOs can be seen to spend much less time with executive leadership - 17%. Another point to note is that core CIOs generally spend more than time than vanguard CIOs working within the IT team and with IT suppliers and customers.

Time management

The CIO Connect study finds that the more time CIOs spend with executive leaders the better placed they are to build on their knowledge of business and organizational practices, and change management processes.

Past experiences with transformational change programs such as ERP gives the CIO the broadest enterprise-wide view of operational business processes and activities, and is best placed to maximize the benefit that technology can bring to the business.

Tan Hock Hai, CIO at ST Engineering in Singapore estimates that he spends up to 10% of his time on business strategy through participation in the IT steering committees of various business units. Transformational change, including ERP implementations and group-level roll outs of IT programs and initiatives keep him busy up to 60% of the time. Meanwhile, managing internal IT services and vendor management take up about 20% and 10% of his time.

It must be noted that the time spent on these various responsibilities does not necessarily mean that one CIO is doing a better job persay than another. It's a measure of strategic involvement rather than effectiveness in the role. If the CIO role is defined by the business to be more a maintainer or systems and project management then by definition the role involves much less strategic planning with the business. Reaching vanguard CIO status should be a goal if the CIO aspires to it and is in a position to attain strategic influence and leadership.

Determining focus

The CIO role today becomes even more critical given the level of uncertainty and high levels of disruption. It is the CIO who will be helping leaders interpret how their organization should be set up best addresses the complexities of an economic downturn.

The study identified the main focus in CIO discussions with the executive leadership:

- Business strategy (for 55% of respondents)

- Transformational change proposals (54%)

- Issues of business profitability (39%)

- Project briefings and program status updates (39%)

It is interesting to note in chart 2 the difference when vanguard CIO responses are placed against core CIO responses.

Many more vanguard CIOs tended to spend time discussing strategic business planning and transformational change as well as business profitability. While many of the core CIOs highlighted project briefings and status updates as a key discussion topic.

Lemming to leader

The vanguard CIO group display subtle differences in behavior which is accelerating their influence within their organizations even further, setting the agenda for the future role of the CIO.

"It's the top-performer Vanguard CIOs that can take the CIO role on from what they are explicitly asked to do and are able to act in a more holistic way, working out that a good career move would be to develop the office beyond just the technology, and taking on shared services, taking on reengineering processes, and really helping shape the business," said Simon La Fosse, La Fosse Associates, a specialist in recruitment of technology executive leadership.

In the past there has been criticism that IT has unable to satisfactorily anticipate the future needs of the business and slow to react to change.

However, the CIO Connect study shows vanguard CIOs have already started to address this area by improving their forward planning capability. Notably the study found more vanguard CIOs strongly agreed that there is a need to carry out scenario planning exercises to test and prepare change alternatives. More vanguard CIOs were also found to be using IT portfolio analysis to manage and prioritize future program investments, and more vanguard CIOs periodically carry out skills forecasts to check they can meet the likely future business demand.

Tang Wai Yee, assistant commissioner and CIO at Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS), stressed that CIOs today have to manage HR issues well.

"When a staff resigns from a team, there will definitely be a knowledge gap," she said. Thus, Tang takes a keen interest in her team's feedback about their work. She is also keen to help staff develop specific skills, relevant competencies and encourages her team to attain skills certification.

CIO type

A key point to note throughout this is that not all CIOs necessarily have to fit this vanguard CIO profile. Depending on the nature of the business and the maturity of the business, the CIO role may well be limited to managing projects and supporting business processes.

According to Gordon Lovell-Read, former CIO, Siemens, "The perspective of operations and IT delivery, team management, and cost management all have to be balanced with the strategic side and business needs."

He added that, "the skill of the CIO is in achieving the right level of blending, so that there is a linkage achieved between the dynamics of business direction and the IS/IT strategy, and a flow between the two."

The full CIO Horizon report can be found at www.cio-connect.com [7]

Orignal Author:

Chee Sing Chan and Emily Chia

Giant ponzi scheme uncovered

2009-03-12T00:44:00.001+08:00

By Hugh Cumberland

In the wake of the alleged $50bn Madoff and $8bn Stanford ponzi schemes, I have to announce that I have uncovered one that’s a tad larger.

A ponzi scheme is defined as one where current withdrawals are funded by current receipts. So it would seem that the UK central and local government pension schemes with unfunded liabilities of £750bn is indeed a ponzi scheme. In fact so worried about this are they, the UK government has apparently taken legal advice on the possibility of reneging on these massive liabilities. UK politicians in the form of Westminster MPs are of course beneficiaries of these copper-bottomed, gilt-edged, feather-bedded arrangements, so there is no real possibility of default.

As long as our politicians benefit from these generous arrangements, there is no real incentive for them to preserve the interests of those in funded and often un-guaranteed schemes. That would be the majority of us, by my reckoning.

The sooner unfunded, guaranteed pension arrangements are phased out, the better.

And don’t get me started on the liabilities lurking in the UK state pension scheme…

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

13/03/2009 12:15:56 Sriram Natarajan added:

Well, now it looks like all social security and pension schemes are Madoff / Ponzi schemes. All 'welfare' governments collect money from the latest entrants (young generation) and pass it on to the earlier members (pensioners). But the moot point is whether it is better to be a welfare government or leaving your citizens to fend for themselves - as most third world countries do. Imagine what effect all the job cuts would have if countries like UK and US don't have social security schemes.

Criminals Target ATMs to Steal Credit Cards

2009-03-12T00:43:00.000+08:00

Skimming is one of the financial industry’s fastest-growing crimes, according to the U.S. Secret Service. Also, the worldwide ATM Industry Association reports over $1 billion in annual global losses from credit card fraud and electronic crime associated with ATMs.

Skimming is a relatively low tech crime. It can occur in a few different ways. The most common is when a store clerk takes a wedge card skimmer and runs your card through and skims the information off the magnetic strip.

Once the thief has the credit or debit card data they can place orders over the phone or online.

They can also rip the data from the wedge and burn to blank “white” cards. These white cards are effective at self checkouts or when the thief knows the clerk and they “sweetheart” the transaction. These white cards can also be pressed with foils to look like a legitimate credit card.

Then there is a more sophisticated skim. Thieves actually place a hard device on the face of the ATM that looks like the ATM. It’s almost impossible for a civilian to know the difference unless they have an eye for security, or the skimmer is of poor quality.

Often the thieves will mount a small pinhole camera on the side of the ATM in a brochure holder to extract the victims pin number.

Its not just ATMs that are potential marks, gas pumps are just as vulnerable. See video of me discussing Here and another article Here

ADT Unveils Anti-Skim Tool

ADT has a new technology that prevents ATM of skimming. I haven’t seen it yet, but it sounds promising. The ADT Anti-Skim™ ATM Security Solution helps prevent skimming attempts and detects skimming devices on all major ATM makes and models.

ADT’s anti-skim solution is installed inside an ATM near the card reader, making it invisible from the outside. The solution detects the presence of foreign devices placed over or near an ATM card entry slot, without disrupting the customer transaction or operation of most ATMs. Also, the technology helps prevent card-skimming attempts by interrupting the operation of an illegal card reader.

The ADT Anti-Skim ATM Security Solution:
• Helps protect the integrity of cardholders’ personal financial information during ATM transactions.
• Can trigger a silent alarm for command center response and coordinate video surveillance of all skimming activities.
• Requires no software adjustments to the ATM.
• Does not connect to or affect the ATM communications network.
• Has more than 40,000 successful ATM applications worldwide.

Prior to its North American introduction, the ADT Anti-Skim ATM Security Solution was successfully field tested on dozens of ATMs of four major U.S. financial institutions in controlled pilot programs. Testing pilots yielded positive results, with no known skimming compromises occurring.

Again, I haven’t seen it. But would like a first hand demonstration. ADT, Have your peeps call my peeps.

Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert discussing ATM skimming Here

Related Finextra story: ADT unveils anti-skimming tool

The Credit Crisis Timeline

2009-03-11T21:19:00.001+08:00

11 Mar 2009

This timeline provides a daily update on who's buying who, collapses within the global financial markets as well as national and international rescue plans.

The information here is based on news sources including the BBC website and the Financial Times.

Malaysia unveiled a large M$60bn (US$16.2bn) stimulus package, amounting to 9% of GDP, to prevent the export-dependent economy from sinking into a deep recession over the next two years. The package will include guaranteed funds for businesses, equity investments to boost the stock market and tax breaks in addition to increased state spending on infrastructure projects.

Chinese exports plunged 25.7% in February compared with a year ago, as the global economic crisis began to take its full toll on the country’s export sector. China’s exports have decreased for four months in a row.

Iceland nationalised Straumur-Burdaras, the last of the four biggest banks in the country to remain independent.

10 March

Prices paid by Chinese consumers fell for the first time in more than six years last month, prompting warnings from economists that the government will need to act quickly if the country is to avoid a bout of deflation.

Japan’s stock market tumbled to a 26-year low as official figures showing a record current account deficit stoked fears of a deepening recession in the world’s second-biggest economy.

9 March

Japan suffered its largest current account deficit ever in January, raising concerns that it was now in a depression. Japan’s current account fell into deficit for the first time since 1996 and at Y172.8bn (US$1.75bn) was much larger than the Y15.3bn shortfall forecast by economists.

6 March

The Bank of England (BofE) has created £75bn of new money to pump into the economy over the next three months. The BofE conceded that it had run out of options on interest rates after cutting rates as close to zero as possible and needed to take additional unorthodox measures to prevent a slide into deflation.

UK set for 70% economic stake in Lloyds group. Chancellor Alistair Darling has agreed an outline deal that would see the government insure toxic assets of £258bn.

Stock markets in the US and Europe tumbled after Chinese authorities failed to deliver a stimulus package and European central banks slashed interest rates in response to a worsening recession. The S&P 500 dropped 4% to its lowest level since September 1996. Germany’s Dax lost 5%, France’s Cac 40 fell 4% and the UK’s FTSE 100 dropped 3%. Asian markets followed suit: Tokyo’s Nikkei average slid 3.1% and the MSCI index of Asia-Pacific stocks outside Japan was down 0.9%. Australia’s share market fell 1.8%, while South Korea dropped 1.2%. Japan’s Topix dropped to fresh 25-year low, following a 12-year low on Wall Street with growing concerns about the banking sector and the deteriorating health of General Motors.

4 March

The Australian economy is expected to enter recession after contracting for the first time in eight years. Gross domestic product dropped 0.5% in the December quarter from the previous quarter. Year on year growth rose by 0.3%.

The World Bank approved its largest ever loan to a country not classified as being in crisis when it signed a ‘unique’ US$2bn contingency facility to Indonesia to support government spending and external fundraising.

3 March

American International Group (AIG) revealed a US$61.7bn quarterly loss - the largest in US corporate history - and pointed to the next trouble spot for the financial sector by reporting large write-downs in commercial real estate.

Nationalised bank Northern Rock has confirmed that it made a loss of £1.4bn in 2008 following large write-offs on its mortgage loans.

World stock markets plunged this week. The UK's FTSE 100 fell 1.5%, while Germany's Dax and France's Cac 40 were virtually unchanged. Earlier, Japanese stocks traded close to 26-year lows. The Nikkei 225 fell sharply before recovering to 7229.7, down 0.69%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.9%, while India's main Mumbai index ended down 2.3%. The US Dow Jones share index fell below 7,000 points for the first time since 1997.

Toyota, the world's biggest carmaker, has asked for US$2bn in state aid to help its car financing unit.

Nortel Networks, the Canadian telecommunications equipment maker operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, more than doubled its losses to US$2.14bn, mainly reflecting writedowns and a 15% decline in revenues that fell to US$2.72bn from US$3.2bn as customers cut back their spending. For the full year Nortel lost US$5.8bn, compared with a US$957m loss in 2007.

23 February

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is to lend Dubai US$10bn to ease the emirate's debt repayment schedule in an effort to rescue the struggling economy, officials say.

20 February

US banking shares hit their lowest level since 1992 as fears mounted that the government would be forced to nationalise a key institution, according to the Financial Times. Further heavy selling of key names - Bank of America and Citigroup were once again among the worst performing, down 14% to US$3.93 and 13.8% to US$2.51, respectively - helped push the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its lowest level in six years.

19 February

Taiwan has fallen into recession as its GDP slumps 8.36% in the last quarter of 2008 due to export demand falls.

The Bank of Japan stepped up measures to help companies weather the credit crisis, unveiling plans to buy up to Y1,000bn (US$10.7bn) in corporate bonds and extend its purchases of other assets.

17 February

Lloyds Banking Group lost its long-held Aaa credit rating from Moody’s amid worries about growing losses from HBOS.

Japan experienced a quarter-on-quarter fall of 3.3% in gross domestic product (GDP) in the last three months of 2008, pushing the country into its worst slump in 35 years.

Russia’s industrial production fell by 20% in January, a fall that could signal a much larger than expected drop in GDP this year. The decline was its largest month-on-month drop since records began seven years ago.

13 February

Australia’s Senate passed a A$42bn (US$27.4bn) economic stimulus package.

The Spanish economy has fallen into its first recession for 15 years. Spain’s gross domestic product shrank by 1% in the fourth quarter of last year from the previous quarter, and was down 0.7% on the fourth quarter of 2007, according to official statistics.

12 February

South Korea took another 50 basis points off interest rates, bringing the total cuts to 325 basis points since October. The base rate now stands at 2%.

11 February

UBS lost nearly SFr20bn (US$17bn) in 2008. It said it would axe a further 1500-2000 investment banking jobs, taking employment to 15,000 - about one third less than the peak of almost 23,000 in the credit boom.

General Electric will divert US$9.5bn from last year’s stock sale to its finance arm, GE Capital. The move, which follows last quarter’s US$5.5bn capital infusion, will enable GE Capital to reach its goal of reducing its debt, net of cash, ratio to 6-to-1 earlier than expected.

Royal Bank of Scotland said it was cutting 2300 staff, representing about 2% of RBS’s UK workforce of 106,000.

China's exports fell more than expected in January, down 17.5% from a year earlier, marking the biggest drop in more than 10 years. Imports were down 43.1% in the month compared with a year ago.

10 February

The French government agreed to give Renault and Peugeot-Citroën €3bn each in preferential loans in return for maintaining jobs and sites in France. Under the scheme, Renault Trucks, owned by Volvo, will also get a loan of €500m, suppliers will get loans of €600m and the financing arms of the two carmakers will receive loan guarantees of €2bn. Direct loans to carmakers will be for up to five years at 6% interest.

Latvia’s economy contracted at an annual rate of 10.5% in the fourth quarter of last year raising fears that the country may be unable to stick to the conditions attached to its recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) rescue package.

9 February

Nissan is to cut 20,000 jobs worldwide, 8.5% of its workforce, over the next year because of a sharp fall in sales. The Japanese carmaker made the announcement as it said it expected to make a loss of ¥265bn (US$2.9bn/£2bn) for its current financial year.

Barclays Bank has reported profits before tax of £6.08bn (US$9bn) for the full year of 2008, down 14% on its profits taken in 2007.

6 February

Deutsche Bank announces a net loss of €3.9bn in 2008, its first loss since being restructured after World War II.

The US unemployment rate rose to 7.6% in January 2009, up from 7.2% in December 2008, according to official figures. Unemployment is now at its highest level since 1992.

German industrial output fell by 4.6% in December 2008, figures from the Economy Ministry showed.

5 February

The Bank of England reduces UK interest rates to a record low of 1% from 1.5% in an attempt to boost the economy.

The number of people claiming unemployment benefit in Ireland rose in January 2009 to the highest monthly level since records began in 1967. This is in line with unemployment across the nations that share the euro, which rose to its highest level in more than two years last month.

US President Barack Obama announces a US$500,000 limit on executive pay at US firms that need government aid.

Japanese electronics group Panasonic is to cut 15,000 jobs and close 27 plants worldwide as it seeks to reduce costs.

3 February

The Australian government is to spend A$42bn (€20.88bn) on a second fiscal stimulus package to help boost the economy’s flagging growth prospects as the global downturn threatens the nation with its first recession in close to 17 years. The Reserve Bank of Australia cut its benchmark interest rate by 1 percentage point to 3.25%, its lowest level in almost half a century.

In China, 20 million migrant workers (15.3% of total 130 million) have lost their jobs in the country’s coastal manufacturing centres.

Morgan Stanley is preparing to cut up to 1,800 jobs, or about 4% of its global workforce.

30 January

Ford Motor revealed that is drawing down US$10.1bn from its credit lines from its banks because of “concerns about the instability of the capital markets”.

Japanese industrial production fell a larger-than-expected 9.6% and unemployment rose sharply to 4.4% in December.

29 January

The US House of Representatives has passed President Barack Obama's US$819bn economic stimulus package. The bill would cut taxes for people and businesses by US$275bn, while pumping more than US$540bn into a range of initiatives including road and bridge repair, increased unemployment benefits, investment in new technology and renovations to 10,000 schools.

Canada's Conservative government has unveiled a C$40bn (US$32bn) stimulus package that includes infrastructure spending and tax cuts. Canada, which has not run a budget deficit for more than a decade, will be on course for a C$85bn deficit over five years, according to government estimates.

New Zealand’s central bank cut its official rate by a larger than expected 1.5 percentage points to 3.5% and warned that the country was likely to remain in recession for much of 2009.

27 January

Iceland’s government collapsed following political turmoil prompted by the global financial crisis.

The Japanese government threw a US$16.7bn lifeline to companies threatened by the global financial crisis, to try to shield the shrinking economy from more job losses and bankruptcies.

ING, the Dutch banking and insurance group, revealed fresh losses in the fourth quarter of €2bn on its structured credit portfolio, prompting it to seek new state guarantees, replace its chief executive and cut 7,000 jobs.

Société Générale and Crédit Agricole are to merge their asset management businesses to form Europe’s fourth largest operator with €638bn under management.

The French government is to provide €5bn in credit guarantees to help Airbus sell aircraft to customers that are struggling to secure finance for their purchases.

23 January

The UK is now in recession for the first time since 1991, official government figures have confirmed. Gross domestic product fell by 1.5% in the last three months of 2008 after a 0.6% drop in the previous quarter.

Fortis Bank, the Belgian state-owned lender, will record a net loss of up to €19bn for 2008 due to the financial crisis and the break-up of the banking and insurance group that owned it.

22 January

The British pound plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since 1985 amid uncertainty about the government banking support package. Sterling slid another 1.6% against Britain’s main trading partners, taking its losses since 15 January to almost 6%. Against the dollar, the pound closed at US$1.3733, a fall of 11 cents this week.

21 January

The Bank of England will start to buy corporate bonds in large quantities within weeks, said Mervyn King, governor of BoE, speaking to employers at a Confederation of British Industry (CBI) dinner in Nottingham.

The French government said that it would earmark up to €6bn for a rescue plan for its car industry.

20 January

Spain became the first country to lose its triple A credit rating from Standard & Poor’s since Japan in 2001, spurring a slide in the euro as the economic outlook for Europe worsened.

Denmark will offer up to Dkr100bn (€13.4bn) in loans to recapitalise its struggling banks and encourage them to restart lending as the country’s economy continues its slide into recession.

UBS announced that it would buy the commodity index business of AIG, the US insurer, for US$15m, after it spent the past two months divesting non-core commodities activities.

19 January

The UK government has announced a second package of measures to encourage banks to lend to individuals and businesses. The list of measures includes a scheme to offer insurance against banks losing more money from the toxic debt that started the credit crunch, while the Bank of England has been given a new role - it will be able to buy up to £50bn of assets directly from firms. The government is also increasing its stake in RBS to nearly 70% from 58%.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) announced it expects to suffer a loss of up to £28bn last year as a result of the credit crunch.

The US Senate has released the remaining US$350bn of the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) funds. Bond insurers Ambac Financial Group and MBIA have asked for some of the money arguing that a capital infusion from the government would help revitalise public-debt markets.

Eurozone interest rates fell by half a percentage point to the lowest level (2%) in more than three years as the European Central Bank said it expected the single currency area’s recession to deepen and signalled borrowing costs could fall further.

16 January

Citigroup announces plans to split in two, as it reported a quarterly loss of US$8.29bn (£5.6bn). It will realign into two new firms, Citicorp and Citi Holdings. Citicorp will handle the company's traditional banking work, while Citi Holdings will take on the firm's riskiest investment assets.

Bank of America will receive US$20bn (£13.4bn) in fresh US government aid and US$118bn worth of guarantees against bad assets.

The Irish government moves to nationalise Anglo Irish Bank after its funding problems continued.

14 January

Royal Bank of Scotland has raised about US$2.4bn by selling its stake in Bank of China.

The UK government has unveiled a plan to guarantee up to £20bn of loans to small businesses to help them survive the economic downturn. In return for a fee, the state will, in effect, insure banks against companies defaulting on loan repayments.

Barclays is cutting about 2,100 jobs worldwide in investment banking and money management in an attempt to slash its costs. The company is cutting 1,300 people from Barclays Capital, the debt-focused investment banking business, 500 from the Barclays Wealth private banking arm, and 330 in Barclays Global Investors, an asset management business. Overall, the cuts amount to 7% of the three divisions’ staff.

Company bankruptcies in Japan jumped 24.7% in December from a year earlier.

13 January

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has unveiled an economic stimulus package worth about €50bn to kick-start Europe's largest economy.

12 January

The UK Treasury is to own 43.4% of the merged Lloyds HBOS bank, after few shareholders bought new shares. Only 0.24% of the 7.5 billion shares HBOS offered to existing shareholders were taken up, while Lloyds TSB saw only 0.5% of its offered shares purchased.

The sharp slowdown in the US economy will push the federal budget deficit to more than US$1 trillion, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says.

More US workers lost jobs last year than in any year since World War II, with employers axing 2.6 million posts and 524,000 in December alone. The US jobless rate rose to 7.2% in December, the highest in 16 years.

South Korea's central bank has slashed interest rates by half a percentage point to a record low of 2.5%.

9 January

The German government will inject a further €10bn into Commerzbank and take a 25% stake to allow it to complete the takeover of Dresdner Bank from insurance giant Allianz. The capital increase comes two months after the bank received an €8.2bn injection from the government’s financial sector bail-out fund.

8 January

The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 1.5%, the lowest level in its 315-year history.

7 January

Bank of America is selling a US$2.83bn (13%) chunk of its holding in China Construction Bank at a 12% discount, according to a term sheet obtained by Reuters.

2 January

Citigroup’s top executives, including CEO Vikram Pandit and Robert Rubin, a director and senior adviser, will forgo their 2008 bonuses amid internal and external pressure to atone for the company’s huge losses and a US$300bn government bail-out.

Aberdeen Asset Management buys Credit Suisse’s fund arm for up to £250m in shares. The Swiss bank will own 25% of Aberdeen.

UBS has become the first overseas investor to offload its holding in a major Chinese bank as it raised US$835m by selling its 3.4bn shares in the Hong Kong-listed arm of Bank of China.

1 January 2009

London’s leading stocks endured their worst annual falls in at least 24 years, while in Europe and Asia, some markets ended the year by notching up their worst performances since records began, according to the Financial Times. The FTSE 100 lost 30.9% in 2008, which was the blue-chip index’s worst annual fall since it was created in 1984. Germany’s Xetra Dax fell 40.3%, its worst annual performance in its 20-year history, and the CAC 40 in Paris was down 42.1%. FTSE Eurofirst 300 suffered an annual decline of 44.7%, its worst year since the index was constituted in 1986. The Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo recorded a 42.1% fall, above its last biggest annual loss of 38.7% in 1990, while Korea’s Kospi index ended the year with a loss of 40.7%. In New York, the S&P 500 has already fallen 41% this year, marking its worst run since a drop of 47.1% in 1931 during the Great Depression.

30 December

The Austrian government is preparing to take management control of Vienna-based Bank Medici after the bank revealed clients had lost money in funds it ran which invested with New York financier Bernard Madoff.

The US Treasury department unveiled up to US$6bn in aid for GMAC, the financial services group which is critical to part-owner General Motors‘ turnaround, after the Fed gave GMAC the green light to become bank holding company.

23 December

JPMorgan plans to buy two units of UBS, as the Swiss bank continues to trim its investment banking arm. UBS has agreed to sell its Canadian commodities energy business and also its global agricultural business in a deal expected to close in the first quarter of 2009.

The beleaguered US insurance group AIG will sell the Hartford Steam Boiler Company to Munich Re, the German reinsurer, for US$742m.

China cut interest rates for the fifth time in three months as the government tried to pump money into the economy. The benchmark one-year lending rate was cut by 27 basis points to 5.31%, while the one-year deposit rate was lowered by the same amount to 2.25%.

A record number of merger and acquisition deals were cancelled in 2008 leading to a sharp fall in fees for investment bankers. The total volume of worldwide mergers and acquisitions reached US$3.28 trillion in the year to date, down 29% from the full year 2007. Companies abandoned 1,309 transactions valued at a total of US$911bn, according to Dealogic, the financial data provider. In 2007, there were 870 withdrawn deals valued at US$1.16 trillion. BHP Billiton’s US$147.bn bid for Rio Tinto was the largest-ever withdrawn deal, while the US$48.5bn acquisition of Canada’s BCE telecoms group by a consortium of private equity groups marked the biggest failed buy-out ever.

22 December

The Irish government unveiled a €5.5bn rescue package for the struggling banking sector that will see taxpayers own up to 75% in Anglo Irish Bank. The government will put €2bn into each of Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks in return for an 8% coupon. The Irish government will also make a €1.5bn investment in Anglo Irish, which suffered the resignations of both its chairman and chief executive last week over loans for directors, but will charge a higher coupon of 10%.

Canada has unveiled a plan to ease pressure on automotive parts suppliers and dealers with C$4bn (€589m) in emergency loans to the local subsidiaries of General Motors and Chrysler.

17 December

The US Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates from 1% to virtually zero, saying it would target a record low interest rate of between zero and 0.25%.

16 December

The fallout from Bernard Madoff’s alleged US$50bn fraud spread through the global financial system as more banks revealed exposures to his firm. The potential losses reported by large financial institutions that invested or lent to investors in Madoff’s failed venture reached US$10bn after HSBC confirmed the news, first reported in the Financial Times, that it could lose up to US$1bn. The nationalised Dutch arm of Belgian bank Fortis admitted losses could reach €1bn, while Royal Bank of Scotland joined BNP Paribas and Banco Santander among the victims of the scandal, saying it might lose up to £400m. Japan’s Nomura has US$300m at risk. BBVA may lose €300m.

15 December

The Irish government is to provide a fund of £9bn to recapitalise all its listed banks. The money will be available to AIB, Anglo-Irish, Irish Nationwide, Irish Life & Permanent and Bank of Ireland, which owns the Bristol & West bank.

12 December

The effort to agree legislation to lend US$14bn to the US auto industry has collapsedin the Senate, leading the Bush administration to hold open the possibility that it would seek funds from its financial rescue plan instead.

The Japanese government has doubled the size of its stimulus plan, increasing it by 23 trillion yen (£171bn).

11 December

US House of Representatives approved a US$14bn emergency loan for Detroit carmakers by 237 votes to 170, but the bill faces opposition in the Senate.

The Bank of Korea cut its benchmark interest rate by 1 percentage point to 3%, the lowest since the bank began to set a policy rate in 1999.

10 December

The Bank of Canada has cut its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 1.5%, the lowest rate since 1958.

Volkswagen has become the first German carmaker to seek to tap the country’s €500bn government-backed banking rescue plan. Europe’s largest carmaker said its affiliates, Volkswagen Bank and Volkswagen Financial Services, had applied for state guarantees that would cover loans for refinancing.

09 December

The top executives at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, led by their chief executives, John Thain and John Mack, said they will not receive bonuses this year amid growing pressure on Wall Street leaders to share the pain of the financial crisis. Morgan Stanley also became the first large US bank to announce that employees would be forced to pay back some of their bonuses if they caused significant losses, or reputational harm, to the company.

Sony announces it will close five or six factories and cut 8,000 jobs worldwide in an effort to remain profitable through a slump in consumer spending on electronics.

08 December

India announced an extra $4bn economic stimulus package, which brings the amount in new government spending to help the export, real estate and infrastructure sectors to $60bn.

The European Central Bank announced a three-quarters of a percentage point cut in its main policy interest rate to 2.5% - its largest cut ever - just hours after Sweden’s central bank reduced the country’s official borrowing costs by a record 175 basis points.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled a €26bn package to stimulate the country’s faltering economy. Measures include support for construction and small businesses.

04 December

The Bank of England has cut interest rates from 3% to 2% - the lowest level since 1951.

Latvia has nationalised Parex Bank. The government is set to increase its stake in the country’s second largest bank to 84% in order to reassure depositors, creditors and the International Monetary Fund.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut its benchmark interest rate by a record 150 basis points to 5%.

01 December

Canada's big five banks - Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion, Scotiabank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Montreal – have indicated they will announce writedowns. Bank of Montreal, which reported last Tuesday, tripled fourth-quarter loan loss provisions to US$376m. Scotiabank has disclosed that it will take a pre-tax charge of US$714m. TorontoDominion has announced US$281m in after-tax losses on corporate debt securities and related credit default swaps.

Sweden’s government has considered allocating about US$248m to Saab and Volvo in direct aid or loan guarantees, as GM and Ford anticipates selling these entities.

Royal Bank of Scotland promises to give at least six months’ respite to homeowners who fall behind with mortgage payments.

London Scottish Bank has gone into administration after the Financial Services Authority (FSA) stepped in to stop it accepting deposits. The FSA acted because the Manchester-based firm did not have the amount of cash it needed to continue operating.

27 November

Lehman Brothers’ liquidators have exposed the book value of Lehman’s property exposure in Asia: in Thailand, the exposure is US$1bn, while the bank’s Hong Kong units have US$1bn exposure with about 100 loans or direct real estate investments across the region. The subsidiaries also made inter-company transfers worth US$5bn to the bank’s Japanese arm, which were invested in domestic property assets, while one Asian investment vehicle invested US$500m in Taiwan’s high-speed rail project

26 November

In the UK, Woolworths and MFI, the kitchen retailer, went into administration marking the worst day so far for retail in the financial crisis. There is a chance, however, that a portion of the Woolworths chain might be saved in some way after Deloitte, the administrator, confirmed that it had hired Hilco to manage the retail business.

The European Commission unveils an economic recovery plan worth €200bn, which it hopes will save millions of European jobs. The scheme aims to stimulate spending and boost consumer confidence.

25 November

The US government agrees a bailout of Citi by guaranteeing up to US$306bn in problematic assets and injecting US$20bn in capital to restore confidence in the bank. At the same time, the US Federal Reserve escalated its efforts to revive the financial system, pledging US$800bn to bolster markets for loans to homebuyers, consumers, students and small businesses.

In his Pre-budget Report, Chancellor Alistair Darling unveiled a £20bn fiscal stimulus. UK taxpayers will pay for the consequences of recession, facing six years of austerity. Those earning more than £100,000 will pay more income tax - with those on £150,000 facing a new higher tax rate of 45% - and public spending faces its biggest squeeze for 15 years. All these measures will not kick in until 2011.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a US$7.6bn standby loan for Pakistan to help the country rebound from financial disaster and avoid defaulting on its debt.

21 November

Citigroup's crisis deepened as its shares continued to slump despite a planned investment of about US$250m by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, its largest individual investor. The 26.4% fall in shares, which closed at US$4.71 in New York on Thursday 20 November, prompted Citi's directors and executives to look at strategic options, including selling part or all of the company.

JPMorgan has begun what is believed to be a 10% reduction in its workforce. The job cuts, which will happen across all divisions of the investment bank, could be close to 3,000. Currently the bank employs about 29,000 people.

20 November

Sir Tom McKillop, chairman, and Sir Fred Goodwin, outgoing chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), apologised to investors for the bank's troubles and also admitted to shareholders at the bank's meeting called to approve a £20bn capital raising that RBS's ill-timed acquisition of part of Dutch bank, ABN Amro, had "added to our difficulties". Sir McKillop said RBS's acquisition of part of ABN Amro at the height of the markets boom for €71bn had "increased the short-term vulnerability of the group to the financial crisis as it intensified this year".

Hedge fund investors pulled a record US$40bn out of the industry in October, as poor performance prompted a flight to cash, according to data published today. Hedge funds were hit by more redemptions in October than at any time since Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research started compiling figures in 1990, and it has predicted worse to come.

19 November

The three biggest US carmakers - Ford, General Motors and Chrysler - have asked US Congress for a $25bn bail out. The bosses told a Senate hearing that without the rescue package their firms risked collapse and warned of broader risks to the US economy.

18 November

Barclays has changed the terms of its £7bn capital raising so that investors can participate in the issue of a security paying a 14% coupon. The UK bank also said it would put its entire board up for re-election at its annual meeting next April, "in recognition of the extraordinary circumstances of the capital raising". Unlike other big UK banks, Barclays did not want to accept a bail-out from the UK government and had previously said the move to raise cash from the Middle East would keep it "strong and independent".

Official figures show UK inflation dropped from a 16-year high of 5.2% to 4.5% in October, as oil prices and transport costs fell.

Citigroup has announced plans for about 52,000 new job cuts, on top of 23,000 cuts already made this year. It is estimated that the bank has lost more than US$20bn in the past year because of the global financial crisis.

17 November

Nout Wellink, chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and president of the Netherlands Bank, presents the Basel Committee's strategy to address the fundamental weaknesses revealed by the financial market crisis that relate to the regulation, supervision and risk management of internationally active banks. Key building blocks include strengthening the risk capture of the Basel II framework (in particular for trading book and off-balance sheet exposures), enhancing the quality of Tier 1 capital and building additional shock absorbers into the capital framework that can be drawn upon during periods of stress.

World leaders pledged to shore up global growth, avoid protectionism and move quickly on regulatory reform at the Washington summit of the Group of 20 (G20). They also pledged a fresh effort to revive the Doha round of trade talks.

India’s central bank has taken emergency measures to avert a growing liquidity crunch affecting the country’s estimated US$43.7bn of outstanding trade finance. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) more than doubled the funds it makes available for banks to refinance export credit at favourable interest rates to US$4.5bn.

Saudi Arabia resisted international pressure to copy Japan’s example and give the International Monetary Fund (IMF) additional funds to bail out ailing economies. It has opted instead to focus on domestic expenditures.

12 November

The number of people out of work in the UK in the three months to September jumped by 140,000 to 1.82 million - the highest in 11 years. The unemployment rate rose to 5.8%, up from 5.4% in the previous quarter, according to official figures. The latest jobs figures came shortly before the Bank of England produced its gloomiest set of forecasts in more than a decade. The Bank said Britain's economy had probably already entered recession and was likely to contract further in 2009.

11 November

American Express is the latest financial group to convert to a bank holding company, which gives the credit card group permanent access to Federal Reserve funds.

Santander of Spain announced a deeply discounted €7.2bn rights issue to bolster its capital ratios.

Circuit City, the US electronics retailer, filed for bankruptcy protection, admitting it was struggling to persuade suppliers to keep its stores stocked for the holiday season. With more than 700 stores and 40,000 employees, Circuit City is the largest US retailer to fall victim to the credit crisis.

Carnegie, the Nordic region’s oldest and largest investment bank, was taken over by the Swedish government after its licence was revoked for failures in its internal controls. Carnegie is the first Swedish bank to collapse in the current global financial crisis and the first to be taken over since the country’s banking crisis of the early 1990s.

10 November

The pound fell 0.5% to US$1.5730 against the dollar, lost 0.5% to Y156.01 against the yen and dropped 0.8% to £0.8171 against the euro. This is the weakest rate the pound has hit against the euro since it was introduced in 2002.

9 November

China announces a a two-year US$586bn financial package to help boost the economy.

7 November

The European Central Bank cut borrowing costs by half a percentage point to 3.25%.

6 November

The Bank of England has made a 1.5 percentage point cut in UK interest rates to 3%, the lowest level since 1955.

The IMF approves a US$16.4bn loan to the Ukraine to support the country's economy through the financial crisis.

5 November

The Italian government will provide up to €30bn in capital for banks so they can keep lending to companies.

Australia’s central bank made a bigger cut than expected in its benchmark interest rate, cutting it by 75 basis points to 5.25 per cent, because of slowing Chinese growth and lower commodity prices, it stated.

Allco Finance, the Australian asset manager that joined forces with Texas Pacific Group and Macquarie in the failed A$11bn buy-out bid for Qantas Airways, has collapsed into receivership owing close to A$1bn.

4 November

Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest bank, becomes the first bank to tap into the government’s financial sector bail-out fund in order to increase its capital with an €8.2bn injection. The bank may also draw on state guarantees for €15bn of debt issuance.

HBOS revealed that writedowns against its profit and loss account for the nine months to the end of September would be £5.18bn, a more than doubling of the £2.46bn taken in the first half.

Dexia said would take a €105m net loss in its third quarter, after the Austrian government stepped in to rescue Kommunalkredit, a lender to public authorities. Austria’s finance ministry said it would buy the 99.8% of Kommunalkredit owned by the country’s Volksbanks, a largely rural co-operative banking organisation, and Dexia.

31 October

Barclays looks to secure a capital injection worth around £7.3bn from Middle Eastern governments, including the Qatar Investment Authority and an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund. If the deal is completed as expected, the Middle Eastern investors will have an almost 32% stake in Barclays.

The US economy shrank at an annualised rate of 0.3% between July and September, according to figures from the Commerce Department. The Federal Reserve has cut its key interest rate from 1.5% to 1% in order to stave off recession.

American International Group (AIG) has raised US$20.9bn from a new Federal Reserve lending facility, which is designed to boost the commercial paper market, to repay part of a Fed loan. As of Wednesday, AIG owed the US government $83.5bn, down from $90.3bn a week ago.

Japan unveils a US$50.8bn economic stimulus package, the second in two months. The stimulus plan follows the passing of a US$2bn supplementary budget earlier this month to fund Japan’s first stimulus package.

American Express announced plans to cut 7,000 jobs as part of a plan to save US$1.8bn by the end of 2009.

Hungary has been granted a $25bn rescue package by the IMF, the EU and the World Bank.

China's central bank has cut the country's interest rate by 0.27% from 6.93% to 6.66% in order to stimulate economic growth; while Iceland's central bank has raised its key interest rate to 18% from 12%.

The Bank of England says the world's financial firms had now lost £1.8 trillion (US$2.8 trillion) as a result of the continuing credit crisis.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to offer a US$16.5bn (£10.4bn) loan to Ukraine.

28 October

The European Community announces plans that is ready to participate in a co-ordinated financing package with the IMF to underpin balance-of-payments sustainability in Hungary. The Community stands ready to provide a loan of €6.5bn to Hungary under the Community medium-term assistance facility established under Article 119 of the Treaty in conjunction with IMF assistance to the amount of €12.5bn and World Bank assistance of €1bn. The concrete modalities will shortly be finalised in co-operation with the Hungarian authorities.

27 October

The Nordic countries declare their readiness to help Iceland in battling the current financial crisis. A high-level committee will consider Iceland's financial needs following a planned loan from the IMF, and look into how the Nordic states could assist in co-operation with the IMF.

24 October

The Danish central bank raises its key interest rate by 0.5 percentage points to 5.5%.

The Office for National Statistics in the UK releases figures that indicate the country is on the brink of a recession. The economy shrank for the first time in 16 years between July and September, as economic growth fell by 0.5%.

21 October

The French government will inject €10.5bn into the six largest players in an effort to shore up their balance sheets. Credit Agricole would receive €3bn, BNP Paribas €2.55bn, Societe Generale €1.7bn, Credit Mutuel €1.2bn, Caisse d'Epargne €1.1bn, and Banque Populaire €0.95bn.

20 October

The chairman, director general and chief financial officer of Caisse d'Epargne resigns following the bank's €600m loss announced on 17 October. The bank said its problems would not affect its planned merger with Banque Populaire.

ING accepted a €10bn capital injection from the Dutch government to shore up its core capital. The Dutch banking and insurance group also agreed to sell its Taiwan life insurance unit to Fubon Financial for $600m.

South Korea announced a rescue package worth about US$130bn for its banks and companies suffering from a foreign currency liquidity crunch.

BayernLB, the state-owned regional lender, will become the first German financial institution to accept assistance, seeking up to €5bn from the government's €500bn rescue package.

Sweden guarantees new medium-term liabilities of banks up to a level of £117.2bn.

Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain says he expects to see thousands of job cuts in IT, finance, and administration as the company looks for US$7bn in savings from its merger with Bank of America.

17 October

French savings bank, Caisse d'Epargne, announces a loss of €600m in a 'trading incident' which the bank said was triggered by what it called "extreme market volatility" amid the market crash during the week of 6 October.

Switzerland has agreed to fund a vehicle that would take on most of the toxic debts held by UBS and injecting €3.9bn to help recapitalise the bank.

The European Central Bank gives Hungary €5bn credit line.

Five Austrian banks - UniCredit unit Bank Austria, Erste Bank, Raiffeisen Central Bank, Austrian Volksbanken and BAWAG - have taken over Constantia Privatbank as part of the government's plan to help stabilise financial markets.

14 October

Lloyds TSB takeover of HBOS falters. UK Treasury drafts full-blown nationalisation plans.

13 October

The G7 nations - which comprises the US, Japan, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Canada - issued a five-point plan of ‘decisive action’ to unfreeze credit markets, after a meeting in Washington. The specific details of this plan have not been released.

The German and French government unveiled plans to restore liquidity and inject fresh capital into their banking sectors - as part of a co-ordinated bailout campaign by western governments. Germany will inject up to €470bn, while France’s plan totalled €340bn. The Netherlands proposed a €199bn rescue plan and Austria offered a similar package worth €85bn. Spain set aside up to €100bn to back up debt issued by banks this year, and Portugal pledged about €20bn in guarantees. Italy promises banks as much as they need.

Spanish banking group Santander agreed to buy the rest of US banking group Sovereign Bancorp for $2.4bn, a tenth of the price agreed when it took a minority stake three years ago.

The US is expected to commit US$250bn, out of the US$700bn rescue package agreed earlier this month, to a recapitalisation programme, providing a temporary sovereign guarantee for bank borrowing and expand depositor protection. About half the money would be invested in bigger US banks including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley - with the largest lenders receiving as much as US$25bn.

Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS agreed to scrap dividend payments in exchange for a government rescue package of £37bn.

The Federal Reserve has approved a $12bn takeover of Wachovia and its subsidiaries by Wells Fargo, beating out Citi.

Britannia, the UK’s second-largest building society, is in early stage discussions with the financial services arm of the Co-operative Group about combining the two businesses.

10 October

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) acquires BankWest unit - which operates in Western Australia - from UK's HBOS - for US$2.1bn. BankWest will now be part of CBA's four year migration of its core banking operations to the SAP for Banking platform, which was outlined in April.

9 October

The US stock market suffered its largest loss since the crash of 1987 amid panic over General Motors, Morgan Stanley and several big insurance companies.

Russia approved a raft of measures worth US$86bn to assist banks hit by the credit freeze. The government will make US$50bn available to banks and firms that need to refinance foreign debt. The rest will be available as loans to banks.

8 October

The UK government agrees a £400bn three-prong plan to bail out British banks. The government could invest as much as £50bn in the banking industry while offering guarantees over as much of £250bn of new bank debt and adding £100bn to the existing Bank of England short-term loan scheme. The banks involved are Abbey, now part of Santander of Spain, Barclays, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered as well as Nationwide Building Society.

Six central banks - the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, Sveriges Riksbank, and the Swiss National Bank - announce reductions in policy interest rates.

The Federal Reserve agrees to inject up to an additional US$37.8bn into AIG.

UK government announces plans to sue Iceland over UK customer deposits in Icesave, the failed Internet bank seized by Iceland.

ING Direct UK will acquire £2.5bn of deposits and 160,000 customers from Kaupthing Edge. The group is also acquiring £538m of savings held by 22,200 people with Heritable Bank, a subsidiary of Landsbanki.

7 October

Russia commits to pumping US$37bn in long-term loans into its biggest state banks.

The Federal Reserve announced a new commercial paper lending facility to jump start funding for companies.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia is in talks to buy BankWest, the Australian subsidiary of HBOS, in a deal for A$2bn.

6 October

Germany announces a €50bn plan to save one of the country's biggest banks, Hypo Real Estate, which is worth €15bn more than the first rescue attempt, which fell apart a day earlier.

French bank, BNP Paribas, buys the Belgian insurance business of Fortis while ownership of EMCF, the Fortis Bank subsidiary that provides clearing services to Instinet Chi-X and Nasdaq OMX, passes to the Dutch government as part of a €16.8bn rescue package.

Iceland's government takes control of the country's second largest bank, Landsbanki.

Nomura International , the Asia-based investment bank, announces that the conditions to closing the acquisition of Lehman Brothers' investment banking and equities businesses in Europe and the Middle East had been met. The deal will become legally effective on Monday 13 October. Nomura Holdings also announces that it has made an agreement with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. to acquire Lehman Brothers Services India Private Limited, Lehman Brothers Financial Services (India) Private Limited, and Lehman Brothers Structured Finance Services Private Limited, all specialised service companies based in Powai, Mumbai.

3 October

Wells Fargo announces it is set to buy Wachovia for US$15.1bn, which scuppers an earlier US government-backed rescue deal in which Citi would buy Wachovia's banking arm for US$2.2bn.

30 September

Dexia becomes the latest European bank to be bailed out as the deepening credit crisis continues to shake the banking sector. The Belgian, French and Luxembourg governments said they would put in €6.4bn to keep it afloat.

29 September

In Britain, the mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley is nationalised. The British government takes control of the bank's £50bn mortgages and loans, while its savings operations and branches are sold to Spain's Santander.

The Icelandic government takes control of the country's third-largest bank Glitnir after the company had faced short-term funding problems.

28 September

The credit crunch hits Europe's banking sector as the European banking and insurance giant Fortis is partly nationalised to ensure its survival. It is seen as too big a European bank to be allowed to go under.

25 September

In the largest bank failure yet in the US, Washington Mutual (WaMu), the giant mortgage lender which had assets valued at US$307bn, is closed down by regulators and sold to JPMorgan Chase.

22 September

Nomura Holdings, Inc. announces it has agreed to acquire Lehman Brothers' franchise in the Asia Pacific region including Japan and Australia. The transaction is subject to a number of conditions.
The deal includes all of Lehman Brothers' franchises and approximately 3,000 employees in multiple locations in the Asia-Pacific region.

17 September

Britain's biggest mortgage lender HBOS is taken over by Lloyds TSB in a £12bn deal creating a banking giant holding close to one-third of the UK's savings and mortgage market. The deal follows a run on HBOS shares.

UK bank, Barclays, buys Lehman Brothers' north American investment banking and trading unit for US$250m, and pays US$1.5bn for its New York headquarters and two data centres.

16 September

The US Federal Reserve announces an US$85bn rescue package for AIG, the country's biggest insurance company, to save it from bankruptcy. AIG gets the loan in return for an 80% public stake in the firm.

15 September

After days of searching frantically for a buyer, Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, becoming the first major investment bank to collapse since the start of the credit crisis.

US bank Merrill Lynch agrees to be taken over by Bank of America for US$50bn.

7 September

Mortgage lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which account for nearly half of the outstanding mortgages in the US, are rescued by the US government in one of the largest bailouts in US history.

At the same time, in the UK, the Nationwide merges with two smaller rivals, the Derbyshire and Cheshire Building Societies.

1 August

US mortgage lender, IndyMac Bancorp, files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

22 July

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issues for public comment 'Guidelines for Computing Capital for Incremental Risk in the Trading Book', as well as Proposed Revisions to the Basel II market risk framework.

17 March

Wall Street's fifth-largest bank, Bear Stearns, is acquired by JPMorgan Chase for US$240m in a deal backed by US$30bn of central bank loans.

18 February 2008

Shares in Northern Rock are suspended and the UK bank is nationalised, after UK Chancellor, Alistair Darling, announces that neither of the two proposals tabled for Northern Rock - one from a group led by Virgin and the other from in-house management - offer enough value to the taxpayer.

GDP could shrink 10%

2009-03-06T00:03:00.003+08:00

The good news: When US economy improves, S'pore will recover swiftly

By Li Xueying, Political Correspondent

MINISTER Mentor Lee Kuan Yew yesterday raised the possibility of Singapore's economy shrinking by as much as 10 per cent this year.

This would happen if the country's exports continue to drop at the same speed as they did earlier this year, he predicted. They fell 35 per cent in January.

Said Mr Lee: 'If the second quarter shows a further drop of another 30, 40 per cent, it (economic growth) will go down to -10 (per cent).'

If so, this would be a performance four times worse than 2001's record low when the economy shrank 2.4 per cent.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said last week the economy could shrink by 8 per cent, a prognosis bleaker than the official forecast of -2 per cent to -5 per cent, if Singapore's exports were to fall by a third.

Speaking at a dialogue organised by news agency Thomson Reuters, MM Lee fielded over 20 questions from the audience of largely bankers. Most queries centred on the economy.

He leavened the gloom by observing that Singapore will be one of the fastest to recover once the major economies - the United States, Europe, Japan - did.

'There's no running away from it. They must recover before we bounce back,' he said.

'(But) when they do recover, we'll bounce back faster than anybody else because...three-and-a-quarter times our GDP is in external trade. So we just got to tough it out.'

Another reason for confidence is that Singapore is sited within the growth area that is East Asia.

TOP 50 SAFEST BANKS WORLDWIDE

2009-03-05T23:53:00.001+08:00

S'pore banks make the cut

By Gabriel Chen

SINGAPORE banks are among the top 50 safest worldwide, according to Global Finance magazine.

DBS Bank kept the Republic's flag flying high by snagging the No. 28 spot, up from 41th position in the previous year.

United Overseas Bank and OCBC Bank - both of which were not in the top 50 list in last year's rankings - came in at 37th and 38th, respectively.

The ranking, announced last month by the US-based magazine, is based on size and credit quality of the lender.

First, the world's largest banks by asset size are selected. Then ratings from Fitch Ratings, Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's are applied to the list, with appropriate weightings.

Banks that garner good ratings across the board occupy a higher position.

Mr Trevor Kalcic, regional bank analyst at ABN Amro Asia Securities, said it is easy to see why Singapore's Big Three have been recognised as among the world's safest.

'They've very strong capital positions, they don't face the kind of liquidity constraints other banks face, and we've a strong regulatory regime and that clearly helps,' he said.

Of course, such rankings must also be taken with a pinch of salt, banking observers say.

Top position for this year's rankings was occupied by KfW Bankengruppe, dubbed 'Germany's dumbest bank' by the country's leading newspaper, Bild.

GIC assets down 25%

2009-03-05T23:35:00.003+08:00

UBS, Citi stakes bought too early, says MM, but 'we can tough it out'

THE investment portfolio managed by the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) has lost about 25 per cent of its value from its peak last year, Minister Mentor and GIC chairman Lee Kuan Yew revealed in a Reuters interview yesterday.

Putting a figure to GIC's losses for the first time since the financial crisis started, MM Lee also acknowledged that GIC had bought shares in global banks UBS and Citigroup 'too early'.

'We expected the market to go down in equities,' he elaborated at the Thomson Reuters Newsmaker Event after his interview. GIC thus reduced equity holdings by 15 per cent to 16 per cent, making it cash-rich and able to pick up stocks like UBS and Citi when the market fell.

'But we went in too early,' he said. 'That's part of the ride. We can tough it out for 10 years, 15 years.'

Last month, the Government disclosed that Temasek Holdings saw net portfolio value drop 31 per cent between March 31 and Nov 30 last year. Senior Minister of State for Finance Lim Hwee Hua said the Government assesses the performances of GIC and Temasek on an 'overall basis' rather than on individual investments.

MM Lee said in the Reuters interview that if GIC had not gone into banks and had held on to its equity investments instead, these would also have lost value.

Just last week, GIC converted its US$6.88 billion (S$10.6 billion) of preferred shares in Citigroup into common stock at US$3.25 per share. This pared its paper losses on the investment from 80 per cent to 24 per cent, reports said.

GIC also invested 11 billion Swiss francs (S$14 billion) in UBS in December 2007, a stake that was diluted when the Swiss government pumped emergency cash into the faltering bank last October.

Still, MM Lee said GIC's performance was 'slightly better than Harvard'. Harvard University's endowment fund likely fell about 30 per cent last year, while Yale University's endowments have seen double-digit declines.

GIC has 'well over US$100 billion' in investments over several asset classes in more than 40 countries, according to its first-ever annual report released in September last year. The exact value of GIC's portfolio is not publicly known.

Why Ho Ching quit

2009-03-05T23:26:00.004+08:00

SINGAPORE'S Cabinet gave in-principle approval for Temasek Holdings chief executive officer Ho Ching to step down last month, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said on Wednesday.

This followed a Cabinet paper tabled by the Ministry of Finance, Temasek's parent. The paper laid out Ms Ho's reasons for retiring, MM Lee said at the Thomson Reuters Newsmaker Event.

'She thinks it was time,' he said.

'It's got nothing to do with bad investments because when you go in aggressively into the market you must take the knocks when the knocks come.'

Temasek said in a surprise announcement last month that Ms Ho, who joined Temasek's board in 2002 and became chief executive in 2004, would step down on Oct 1.

As to why the reins were handed over to an expatriate - American Charles Goodyear, former chief executive of BHP Billiton - MM Lee said 'there was nobody inside Temasek equal to the job'.

Mr Goodyear has 'a proven record, and we feel he was a better man than what we had within the system', he said.

He was also 'somebody exposed to world markets', and Temasek's investments 'covered the world', noted Mr Lee.

Whether the new appointment marks a change in Temasek's strategy will depend on how the financial sector evolves, something no one can predict, he added.

In response to a question on whether the timing of Ms Ho's retirement was wise given the uncertain economic conditions, MM Lee said that was for Temasek's board to decide.

'Temasek goes in for higher rewards and higher risks,' he said. 'They lead a very dynamic team to keep nimble and move with the market, move faster than the market.'

ST: FIONA CHAN

Windows 7 to include features to cater to enterprise

2009-03-05T01:25:00.000+08:00

Windows 7 will include features specifically to meet the needs of enterprise customers based on early feedback from them. By Elizabeth Montalbano
05 Mar 2009

NEW YORK, 4 MARCH 2009 - Windows 7 will include features specifically developed for enterprise customers and partners in an unprecedented number of technology early-access programs Microsoft is offering for the forthcoming OS.

Microsoft invited more than 100 customers and partners to give feedback on Windows 7 early on in its development process in an attempt to learn from mistakes it made when building Vista, said Gavriella Schuster, a senior director of Windows product management, in an interview Tuesday.

Microsoft developed four new customer and partner focus groups and spent six months planning how it would build Windows 7, and how it would engage customers early and often in that process, before even beginning development, she said.

Microsoft revealed more about this process in a blog post on the Windows Team Blog Wednesday.

In addition to expanding the number of testers in its existing Technology Adoption Program from about a dozen to nearly 20, Microsoft formed a Desktop Advisory Council, an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) engagement group, a Windows ecosystem readiness program and a First Wave program of customers to deploy the beta in live environments to garner "really early insight" from customers and partners about what the final OS should look like, Schuster said.

The company invited 4,000 enterprise customers in the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Japan, India and China to provide feedback as part of extensive research as well, she said.

Enacting this unprecedented level of early customer engagement, combined with an effort to make the development process more predictable in general, were aimed at avoiding missteps the company took as it built Vista. Features Microsoft promised early on in Vista's development didn't make it into the final code, and the process itself was shut down and restarted midway through.

"We know the stop-and-start nature of Vista [development] posed a lot of challenges for customers," Schuster said.

With Windows 7, Microsoft has tried to share information "only when we had a higher degree of certainty" Microsoft could deliver on features or time frames for release milestones, she said.

As a result of all of this effort, Windows 7 will include several enterprise-specific features developed based on feedback from Microsoft's focus groups and other research.

Customers and partners said that protecting corporate data was a key priority, which is why Windows 7 will expand the BitLocker feature from Vista with a BitLocker To Go feature, Schuster said.

BitLocker To Go will extend the encryption already provided by the feature not only to the PC's hard drive itself but to any external USB device that is plugged into the laptop, she said. This will make it more difficult for hackers to access data not only on the PC but on peripherals connected to it.

Enterprise customers also expressed a need to ensure that corporate users only install and use authorized applications on their PCs and desktops, which led Microsoft to include a new AppLocker feature in Windows 7, Schuster said.

AppLocker allows IT administrators to determine through group policy what applications a user is able to install. For instance, a policy can be set that a user can install any application from Adobe Systems or to be more specific, only Adobe Acrobat 8.1 or later, Schuster said.

Policy setting in AppLocker can also be narrowed down to the "script level," with administrators authorizing that users can install only certain scripts on their machines, she added.

Enterprise customers also told Microsoft during the feedback process that they need to be able to give better remote access to employees because more of them are working outside of the office and that will continue. As a result, Windows 7 will include a couple of new features to make it easier for remote workers to access corporate networks, she said.

One is a DirectAccess feature that replaces a virtual private network with a secure tunnel to the network at the core OS level. Another is a Branch Office Caching feature that allows users on a corporate network to find and access a file on another corporate user's local machine if it already has been downloaded from the corporate network to that machine. This makes it easier for users to get access to files on a corporate network, Schuster said.

Microsoft is widely expected to release Windows 7, which is now in beta, before the end of the year. Microsoft has said it is on track to deliver the OS three years after it released Vista, which went out to business customers in November 2006 and to the general public in January 2007.

Nasa global warming satellite fails

2009-02-26T21:56:00.000+08:00

By Green Channel staff | Feb 26, 2009

A $270 million Nasa satellite dedicated to measuring the world’s carbon emission failed to reach orbit yesterday.
The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite failed shortly after liftoff when the fairing – which protects the satellite as it speeds through the atmosphere – failed to separate.

It had lifted off on a Taurus XL launch rocket from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base early Tuesday morning local time.
The LEOStar-2 satellite landed in the sea near Antarctica, John Brunschwyler, manager of the Taurus program, told a press conference.

“The fairing has considerable weight relative to the portion of the vehicle that's flying. So when it separates off, you get a jump in acceleration. We did not have that jump in acceleration,” Brunschwyler said.

“As a direct result of carrying that extra weight, we could not make orbit.”

The satellite was expected to help clear up the mystery of the missing carbon “sink” - where carbon dioxide is pulled out of the atmosphere and stored.

While some 40% of carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution have remained in the atmosphere, only half of the remaining 60% can be accounted for in the oceans. The rest must have been absorbed somewhere on land, but scientists have not yet discovered where.

OCO was to have collected 8 million measurements every 16 days for at least two years to help map the global distribution of carbon dioxide, Nasa said.

Attention now has turned to Japan’s Gosat (Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite), launched in January and due to go into service in April.

Nasa said the planned launch of a second satellite to monitor greenhouse gas, scheduled for June, had been put on-hold pending the outcome of an investigation into the OCO failure.

UBS admits to helping defraud IRS

2009-02-18T23:42:00.003+08:00

Banking giant UBS admits to helping defraud IRS, will pay $780M, open secret Swiss records

Devlin Barrett, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday February 18, 2009, 8:14 pm EST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Banking giant UBS has agreed to pay $780 million and turn over once-secret Swiss banking records to settle allegations it conspired to defraud the U.S. government of taxes owed by thousands of American clients.

As part of the deal struck in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., UBS has made the unprecedented step of agreeing to immediately turn over to the U.S. government account information for U.S. customers of the bank's cross-border business.

In doing so, federal authorities have struck a big crack in Switzerland's vaunted bank secrecy laws.

UBS will pay $780 million in fines, penalties, interest and restitution for conspiring to create sham accounts to hide the assets of U.S. clients from the U.S. government.

The financial hit on UBS is more than double the penalty imposed by federal authorities just last month on a different international bank, Lloyds TSB Bank PLC, for helping its clients skirt U.S. sanctions against Sudan, Iran and Libya.

"We accept full responsibility for these improper activities," Peter Kurer, chairman of Swiss-based UBS AG, said in a statement. He added that the bank was determined to abide by the terms of the deal with U.S. criminal and securities officials.

"Client confidentiality, to which UBS remains committed, was never designed to protect fraudulent acts or the identity of those clients, who, with the active assistance of bank personnel, misused the confidentiality protections," he said Wednesday.

About 17,000 American clients concealed their UBS accounts from the IRS, hiding total assets of roughly $20 billion, U.S. officials said.

According to U.S. officials, when an acquisition in 2000 of a U.S. company brought UBS a host of new, American clients, the bank set about to evade new reporting requirements for those clients. To do so, UBS executives helped U.S. taxpayers open new accounts in the names of sham entities.

Prosecutors contend that UBS executives used encrypted software and other counter-surveillance techniques to prevent anyone from detecting that they were actively marketing such Swiss bank secrecy -- and tax evasion -- to American taxpayers.

The clients, in turn, filed false tax returns that omitted the income they earned in their Swiss accounts, according to the court papers.

Federal officials said they had pulled aside a veil of secrecy that hid a corrupt international banking practice.

"This was not a mere compliance oversight, but rather a knowing crime motivated by greed and disrespect for the law," said Alexander Acosta, U.S. attorney for southern Florida.

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman warned U.S. taxpayers hiding money overseas that it was time to come clean with Uncle Sam.

"People who have hidden unreported income offshore need to get right with their government. They should come forward and take advantage of our voluntary disclosure process," Shulman said.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., has estimated that abusive tax shelters and hidden offshore accounts cost the U.S. government nearly $100 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

Prosecutors are still hunting for UBS executive Raoul Weil, who was indicted in November 2008 on charges he conspired to defraud the government when he was managing the bank's cross-border business.

After the UBS settlement was announced Wednesday, Weil's lawyer Aaron Marcu said the charges should have been dropped against his client as part of the deal.

"Mr. Weil is an innocent victim of a political dispute between the United States and Switzerland over Swiss bank secrecy," Marcu said.

In June 2008 former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld pleaded guilty to a similar charge.

If UBS fails to turn over the clients' information, or stops cooperating with authorities, federal prosecutors could refile charges against the bank.

Under the deal, UBS also will completely stop engaging in the type of cross-border banking business that got them into trouble.

Associated Press writer Curt Anderson in Miami contributed to this report.

UBS AG: http://www.ubs.com

Lawmakers clash with SEC over Madoff probe

2009-02-04T00:02:00.000+08:00

Lawmakers clash with SEC over Madoff probe; whistleblower promises more evidence

Marcy Gordon, AP Business Writer
Wednesday February 4, 2009, 11:01 pm EST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House lawmakers on Wednesday accused the Securities and Exchange Commission of impeding their probe into how the agency failed to uncover the alleged $50 billion fraud perpetrated by Bernard Madoff.

The clash between lawmakers and high-ranking SEC officials came at a hearing after the whistleblower in the case, Harry Markopolos, said he had feared for his physical safety and would turn over new evidence to the agency showing the alleged Ponzi scheme mastermind had not acted alone.

Markopolos said he had discovered a dozen additional funds that funneled money to Madoff, "hiding in the weeds" in Europe. Managers of investment "feeder" funds that relayed money to Madoff willfully turned a blind eye to his improprieties because they were paid generous fees, Markopolos said.

He plans to present his findings to the SEC's inspector general on Thursday. If proven, they would substantiate the assertions of many analysts that the alleged fraud was far too large for Madoff to have conducted alone.

Madoff, a prominent Wall Street figure who had been chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market, was arrested in December after allegedly confessing to his sons that he had bilked investors in what the authorities say may be the largest Ponzi scheme ever.

Markopolos also planned to provide information on what he called a "mini-Madoff," another Ponzi scheme he said he's uncovered that may have defrauded investors of as much as $1 billion.

In loud, angry exchanges, lawmakers threatened to issue subpoenas to SEC officials to compel their testimony.

Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., the House Financial Services subcommittee's chairman, vented frustration after the SEC's acting general counsel said the five officials appearing before the panel couldn't answer lawmakers' questions about the Madoff case because it's under investigation. The five SEC commissioners voted earlier to assert a privilege in not having officials answer questions from Congress.

Kanjorski accused the agency of impeding the panel's investigation, calling it an "abuse of authority."

It was a blistering escalation of criticism of the SEC, which has been blasted by lawmakers and investor advocates over its failure to discover Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme despite the credible allegations brought to it by Markopolos over a decade. Against the backdrop of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, lawmakers of both parties are calling for a shake-up of the agency.

Linda Thomsen, the agency's enforcement director, said the SEC takes the Madoff case very seriously, but asserted there were confidential areas related to the ongoing investigation that couldn't be publicly discussed.

The SEC officials said the agency is looking at possible changes in the wake of the scandal, including more frequent examinations of investment advisers and improving its process for assessing risk. President Barack Obama's new SEC chief, Mary Schapiro, has pledged to revitalize the agency's enforcement efforts.

Schapiro told Kanjorski and Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey, the panel's senior Republican, in a letter Wednesday evening that the hearing "cannot have been satisfactory for you" and offered to set up a meeting promptly to discuss information that could be provided to them without compromising the ongoing investigation of Madoff.

"There needs to be a full accounting, both of Mr. Madoff's activities and of why we did not detect the fraud, which we truly regret," Schapiro wrote.

Markopolos testified that because of the SEC's failure to act on his information on Madoff, "I became fearful for the safety of my family."

"The SEC is ... captive to the industry it regulates and is afraid" to bring big cases against prominent individuals, he said. The SEC's inspector general is investigating how the agency missed the Madoff scheme despite Markopolos' credible allegations and several agency examinations of his operations, and whether his prestige led regulators to look away.

While the SEC is incompetent, the securities industry's self-policing organization, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is "very corrupt," Markopolos charged. That organization was headed until December by Schapiro, who has said Madoff carried out the scheme through his investment business and FINRA was empowered to inspect only the brokerage operation.

In New York Wednesday, a trustee liquidating Madoff's investment firm told a federal judge that nearly $950 million in cash and securities has been recovered for investors. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. last week said they would transfer a combined $534.9 million from Madoff's investment firm accounts to the trustee. Investors have until July 2 to place their claims.

European investors who feared they lost millions investing with Madoff have a chance to recoup some or all of their money from the banks that marketed the stricken funds, according to lawyers in Europe who are preparing a possible U.S.-style class-action lawsuit.

Markopolos, a former securities industry executive and fraud investigator, brought his allegations to the SEC about improprieties in Madoff's business starting in 2000 after determining there was no way Madoff could have been making the consistent returns he claimed.

Markopolos and his investigators raised 29 specific red flags regarding Madoff's operations to SEC staff in Boston, New York and Washington.

Now thousands of victims -- from Hollywood celebrities to international charities -- who lost money investing in Madoff's fund, have been identified.

A document filed late Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan lists the names of several thousand clients who lost money investing with Madoff, including former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, actor Kevin Bacon and even Madoff's relatives and his defense lawyer. The amount each person or institution invested with Madoff isn't listed.

Markopolos also said that he anonymously conveyed a package of documents on Madoff to former New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer, who also took no action. Spitzer's family trust was among the victims that lost money investing with Madoff.

Telephone calls to Spitzer's former representatives seeking comment Wednesday were referred to his New York office, which did not immediately return them.

Markopolos also suggested that senior editors at The Wall Street Journal may have prevented a reporter from pursuing leads he provided in 2005 because the newspaper "respected and feared" Madoff.

That was disputed by a vice president at Dow Jones & Co., the Journal's publisher. "Any suggestion that we feared to report on Madoff is completely absurd," Robert Christie said, citing news stories on Madoff in the Journal and a critical article that appeared in Barron's, Dow Jones' financial weekly, in May 2001.

Obama caps executive pay tied to bailout money

2009-02-04T00:00:00.000+08:00

Obama caps executive pay for companies getting bailouts, seeks to stop rewards `for failure'

Ben Feller, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday February 4, 2009, 8:19 pm EST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Assailing out-of-touch corporate pay and perks, President Barack Obama on Wednesday slammed a salary cap on top executives from companies that want bailouts -- but it's a limit that could end up thinning the wallets of only a small number of people.

Obama's action comes as many Americans, while hanging on for economic life, have watched Wall Street high-flyers receive big-dollar bonuses even as their firms draw public help for survival. The outcry has grown with each report of a bailed-out company that plans to buy a jet or hold a Las Vegas retreat.

The president aimed for a target -- extravagant corporate behavior on the public dime -- that fit the mood of the day. His $500,000 salary limit on executives from a limited number of companies was part of a broader assault on what he called a "reckless culture" that has helped wreck the economy.

"We don't disparage wealth. We don't begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we believe that success should be rewarded," Obama said. "But what gets people upset -- and rightfully so -- are executives being rewarded for failure, especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers."

Top business leaders often receive annual packages worth several million dollars, so a $500,000 compensation cap is striking.

Yet in practical terms, the intervention into the corporate world is also limited.

The compensation cap covers distressed companies seeking special bailouts but would not apply retroactively to those that already have received them. What's more, consultants on executive pay say the cap will probably apply only to a few executives -- not big-time traders, brokers and salespeople who routinely earn whopping pay packages. And there are sure to be efforts to exploit loopholes as the new rules start to take hold.

Had the salary cap been in place when the $700 billion bailout program began, it probably would have applied only to executives at five companies that have received so-called exceptional help: Chrysler LLC, General Motors Corp., American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.

Going forward, the compensation cap would also apply to other banks that receive more broadly available aid -- but they could get around it by disclosing their plans and involving shareholders in the decision. Some 360 companies have received such aid. The cap does not apply to them retroactively, either.

By taking on executive pay and other corporate spending -- including lofty severance packages -- Obama sought to get his White House back on track with an issue that resonates with the public.

His move came one day after the withdrawal of the nomination of Tom Daschle, his friend and choice to head the Health and Human Services Department. Daschle got tripped up over, among other things, overlooking the taxes he owed for the personal use of a car and driver that was paid for by a company he did consulting work for -- the kind of problem that elicits no sympathy from the public.

Obama's new plan is broad.

Beyond imposing tighter rules on companies that get emergency bailouts, it also requires more openness and limits for healthy banks that tap into public money to expand lending. And it envisions broad reforms in how employees are paid at any public financial institution, even ones that don't get federal help.

The new treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner -- confirmed last week despite controversy over his own tax problems -- said the raft of new policies is intended to restore the public's trust.

"There is a deep sense across this country that those who were not responsible for this crisis are bearing a greater burden than those who were," he said in announcing the details with Obama.

The half-million-dollar salary cap would apply to institutions that negotiate agreements with the Treasury Department for "exceptional assistance." That means those companies that get their own specialized help, beyond what is generally available through other financial shore-up programs.

Such firms could pay senior executives more than $500,000 only by using stock that could not be sold until the government gets paid back. Administration aides said trying to impose the salary cap retroactively would pose both legal and practical problems.

As for a bigger category of generally healthy institutions that get federal help, they would also face the $500,000 limit for senior executives. But in their case, the cap can be waived with full public disclosure and a nonbinding shareholder vote.

Timothy J. Bartl, vice president and general counsel for the Center On Executive Compensation, said the president's actions involve a special situation given the government's role bailing out troubled institutions. "We do not view it as something that ought to be extended beyond this circumstance," he said.

On Capitol Hill, some lawmakers had been pushing for even stricter caps.

The executive-pay limits are a first step, to be followed by the unveiling next week of a sweeping new framework for spending what remains of the $700 billion bailout fund that Congress created last year.

Obama chose blunt language, chiding a "culture of narrow self-interest," golden parachute severance packages that "we've all read about with disgust," and the "reckless culture and quarter-by-quarter mentality" that he said has wreaked havoc. He has been particularly angered by a report last week that employees on Wall Street received more than $18 billion in bonuses last year while their eroding financial sector got a massive bailout from taxpayers.

The firms getting "exceptional assistance" from the government would face stronger rules on employing deceptive practices; stricter limits on golden parachutes; more disclosure on their salary plans and a requirement that their boards adopt policies on luxury spending items.

The other firms getting public aid will face a version of those same rules.

The administration also will propose long-term compensation ideas even for companies that don't receive government assistance, Obama said. Among the ideas will be requiring top executives at financial institutions to hold stock for several years before they can cash out.

Associated Press writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this story.

Renewable energy: Air force one

2009-02-03T21:30:00.004+08:00

Air force one

Feb 3rd 2009
From Economist.com

America has become the world leader in wind power

IN ONE policy area, at least, there is good news for President Barack Obama: his pledge to find alternative energy sources to wean America off its dependence on foreign oil is already being put into action. Last year America ramped up wind-power capacity to 25 gigawatts (GW), overtaking the previous leader, Germany, according to new data from the Global Wind Energy Council. America added 8.4GW of installed power in 2008, more than any other country. China is also investing heavily in wind power, nearly doubling its capacity for the fourth year running. Global capacity grew by 29% last year, the highest annual increase for six years.

Since when you'll find whale meat in Sushi???

2009-02-02T23:03:00.003+08:00

Since when you find whale meat in Sushi???

Japanese whalers do not seem to have learned anything from history....it is probably the reason why it's so hard to find history books in Japan that speak the truth!

Thus, it's no wonder their citizens are living in darkness, guilt, and in constant pursuits of peace as much as they are disrupting the fragile ecosystem. A life full of lies and contradictions.

===================

SYDNEY (AFP) -- Japanese whalers accused of injuring activists

Japanese whalers were accused Monday of injuring two anti-whaling activists in a high seas clash in the Antarctic and of deploying a new "military grade" acoustic weapon against protesters.

One activist was cut and bruised after being knocked over by a high pressure blast of water and the other was hit in the face by a metal ball thrown by the whalers, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said.

Both men had been on small inflatable boats launched from the groups' flagship the "Steve Irwin" to "harass the (Japanese whaling) fleet and to hurry them along," Sea Shepherd said in a statement.

The militant environmental group, which has been accused by Japan of "eco-terrorism" for its attempts to disrupt the annual whale hunt, said the whalers had used a new "acoustic weapon" against protesters.

"The factory ship the Nisshin Maru and the two harpoon vessels in the fleet are equipped with long range acoustical devices," the statement said.

"This is a military grade weapon system that sends out mid to high frequency sound waves designed to disorient and possibly incapacitate personnel. It is basically an anti-personnel weapons system."

The "Steve Irwin" retreated when within range of the acoustic weapon but generally had "a very successful day," said captain Paul Watson.

"All we need to do is to keep them running and to keep them from whaling and that is exactly what we are doing," he said.

A spokesman for Japan's government-backed Institute of Cetacean Research would not confirm that the fleet was using sound waves against the activists.

"We can neither confirm nor deny the strategies employed by the Japanese research vessels to protect themselves from the criminal actions committed by the Dutch vessel," Glenn Inwood told Australia's national AAP news agency.

"We can say, however, that all legal means available will be used to ensure these pirates do not board Japanese ships or threaten the lives of the crews or the safety of the vessels."

An international moratorium on commercial whaling was imposed in 1986 but Japan kills hundreds each year in the name of research, while making no secret of the fact that the meat ends up on dinner tables.

Written by pcorp2008 on Feb-2-09 2:52pm

Wall Street braces for rush of corporate, economic data

2009-02-01T23:19:00.000+08:00

Sunday February 1, 5:55 pm ET
By Tim Paradis, AP Business Writer

Wall Street braces for week of bad numbers, looks to Washington for help on economy

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street is bracing for yet more reminders this week that the economy is in rotten shape. Companies from networking-gear maker Cisco Systems Inc. to media giant Time Warner Inc. are set to report quarterly results, while a steady stream of economic readings is also due. The most recent numbers from companies and the government haven't been roundly awful, but most have. That is stirring fears the economy's slide isn't slowing.

On Friday, Wall Street learned that the economy posted its steepest slowdown in a quarter-century during the final three months of 2008. The 3.8 percent decline in the nation's gross domestic product wasn't as bad as Wall Street had forecast but investors grew worried that the numbers will only worsen.

The stock market is coming off its weakest January on record. The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index slid 8.57 percent for the month. The previous record was a 7.04 percent drop in January 1970. The tumble has investors nervous because January often sets the tone for the year.

About 75 percent of the time when the S&P ends lower for January it does for the year as well. Some Wall Street veterans say, however, that the market's past behavior is less relevant because the S&P plunged 38.5 percent last year. A drop of that size makes it more likely the market will end 2009 higher, they argue.

With January behind them, investors will remain eager this week for any insights companies can offer on the economy. Many companies are now wary of committing to specific forecasts, however. That can leave investors with little to go on.

Dow Chemical Co., Marathon Oil Corp., insurer MetLife Inc., Kellogg Co., Kraft Foods Inc. and Walt Disney Co. are expected to report quarterly results this week. Another rush of reports is expected next week before the flow begins to ebb.

Investors are also likely to remain uneasy ahead of the government's January employment report, which is due Friday. Other readings are scheduled throughout the week on home sales, manufacturing, factory orders, and the services sector.

The jobs numbers is often the most-anticipated report of the month. Investors forecast the Labor Department data will show a big drop in payrolls.

"Hopefully it won't be significantly worse than expected," said Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research. He said even if the numbers aren't as bad as some investors fear, it might not ultimately instill much confidence in the market. Investors have become so pessimistic they often view any number that's better than expected with skepticism.

Companies have been slashing workers. Last week alone, companies announced thousands of new layoffs. The cuts and the scary headlines that follow are prompting consumers to cut their spending. That's a worrisome prospect on Wall Street because consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

Investors are looking for any respite from the bad news. Wall Street remains eager to see what steps Washington will take to try to shift the economy's course. President Barack Obama said Saturday he would lower mortgage costs, offer loans to small businesses for creating jobs and restore the flow of credit. Wall Street remains eager to see how he will proceed.

The administration is also determining how to use the second half of the $700 billion financial bailout fund.

And the Senate's version of the stimulus bill backed by the White House and congressional Democrats is headed to the floor for debate this week. The Senate's bill is nearly $900 billion, while the House bill totaled about $819 billion.

"This year I wouldn't expect much from the economy," said Ronald Schwartz, portfolio manager of the RidgeWorth Investment Grade Tax-Exempt Bond Fund. "If we can stabilize this year I think that would be a very good accomplishment. And with the stimulus, what the administration is putting in, that's the hope for it."

But Roberts said Wall Street is waiting for the government to introduce a more "comprehensive" approach to fixing the economy's ills. He said Washington will have to help banks deal with the bad assets crippling their balance sheets before lending can resume more normal levels and the economy can improve.

"It's a difference between triage and long-term care," he said. "What people are now looking for is what are we going to do to cure the problem?"

Death knell for Citigroup's 'supermarket' model

2009-01-14T23:23:00.002+08:00

Citi gives up control of brokerage to Morgan Stanley, 1 step toward ending supermarket model

Madlen Read and Sara Lepro, AP Business Writers
Wednesday January 14, 2009, 10:41 am EST

NEW YORK (AP) -- The original financial supermarket is dead.

The deal, which will give Citigroup $2.7 billion in badly needed cash as it gives up control of Smith Barney, comes as the company still struggles in the aftermath of the mortgage and credit crisis. There is speculation that CEO Vikram Pandit, who for months supported Citigroup as a "universal bank," will be taking further steps to simplify and streamline the company.

Citi could soon shrink itself by one-third, according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday. The Journal says Citi is likely to announce plans next week to shed two consumer-finance units, the bank's private-label credit card business and cut back on trading it does on its own behalf.

And many people on Wall Street believe Citigroup could be headed for an even larger-scale dismantling if the federal government -- which now has a stake in Citi thanks to its recent bailout -- has its way.

"I think within 12 months, Citigroup no longer exists," said William Smith at Smith Asset Management, who owns Citigroup shares. He has been calling for a breakup of Citigroup for years, and believes the government will force that fate in piecemeal fashion over the coming year.

Citigroup shares were down 82 cents, or 13.9 percent, to $5.08 in morning trading Wednesday -- 83 percent below their 52-week high of $29.73 last February. Morgan Stanley shares fell $1.26, or 6.7 percent, to $17.60.

Citigroup was the quintessential financial supermarket, cobbled together over decades by Sandy Weill -- the former CEO who is both lauded for bringing Citigroup its biggest profits ever and criticized for creating an unsustainably massive, impossible-to-manage conglomerate.

The idea behind the supermarket is that the average person can do all his saving, borrowing and investing with one company. Citigroup had it all, the retail and business banking operations, the investment banking business, the brokerage, even Travelers insurance. Whether that one company does it better than a number of specialized companies does, though, has been the big question facing shareholders since the deregulation of the banking industry in the 1990s. And Citi's announcement Tuesday further undermines the idea that one company can handle such diverse businesses at once.

To be sure, JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s model is essentially a supermarket, too, but it does not have as large an international presence as Citigroup has had. Bank of America Corp. has many disparate businesses, too -- including the recent government-brokered acquisition of Merrill Lynch, the world's largest brokerage -- but it maintains a strong focus on its U.S. operations. Perhaps more importantly, analysts argue that these banking giants were managed and integrated much better over the years than Citigroup was.

"The problem with Citi is the model, the execution, the management," Smith said. "How do you go a decade without integrating?"

Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase also took fewer risks than Citi took when it came to the now-failed investments in mortgage-backed securities, and so their losses were much less than the big financial supermarket suffered.

Weill, helped by the force of his personality, made the concept work during his years at the helm, although he presided over the spinoff and sale of the Travelers businesses starting in 2002. The company, whose stock price is now only about a tenth of what it was just two years ago, has struggled since Weill retired in 2006.

In late November, Pandit called the universal banking model "the right model," and that Citigroup's strategy is "to be the world's truly global universal bank." Days later, the government lent the embattled bank $45 billion -- more than other big banks have received -- and agreed to absorb the losses on a huge pool of mortgages and other assets.

Citigroup and Morgan Stanley plan to combine Citi's brokerage, Smith Barney, with Morgan Stanley's wealth management business.

The capital from the Morgan Stanley deal, however, is likely not enough to make up for upcoming losses. And if the government decides it does not want to continue propping up banks like Citigroup, its dismantling could accelerate.

The new administration could "come to the realization that the whole economy does not hinge on the banks," said Octavio Marenzi, head of financial consultancy Celent. "Banking is important. The banks themselves are not."

President-elect Barack Obama has said he might rethink the way the remaining $350 billion of the financial bailout will be used.

This is a huge underlying concern as banks release their fourth-quarter earnings in the coming weeks. While other banks don't appear to be in as much disarray as Citigroup -- which is expected to post its fifth straight quarterly loss next week -- the industry is still clearly troubled.

Wall Street will get an earlier-than-expected reading on the financial sector this week when JPMorgan Chase reports earnings on Thursday, nearly a week ahead of schedule.

"They've done so well so far through the credit crisis. If you see real weakness there, it bodes badly for the rest of the industry," Celent's Marenzi said of JPMorgan Chase.

Though investors largely expect banks to issue bleak fourth-quarter and full-year reports, the concern is that their credit problems are growing -- and spreading to loan portfolios that up until this point had been relatively stable -- setting up 2009 to be another year of multibillion dollar losses.

As the housing market tanked and defaults on mortgages spiked, nearly all banks were forced to set aside huge amounts of cash to cover losses in their mortgage portfolios last year. What will be different about the fourth quarter, and subsequently this year, is that problems in other portfolios, like credit cards and auto loans, are likely to be more pronounced than in previous periods, reflecting the deepening recession.

While Citigroup's troubles have been exacerbated by its sheer size and the scope of its global business empire -- which includes everything from retail banking to credit cards to corporate lending -- analysts see other banks struggling to maintain sufficient capital this year.

"We consider the financial services industry significantly undercapitalized," wrote Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. analyst Paul Miller in a recent research note. "Current capital levels, which should be considered inadequate in even the best of times, pose an even greater risk entering 2009, a year that will remain challenging for financials."

Specifically, Miller is cautious about Bank of America and Wells Fargo & Co., noting their thin common equity. Both banks made sizable acquisitions last year, and therefore are likely to feel some strain as they integrate operations.

In the past year, Bank of America scooped up Countrywide Financial Corp. and Merrill Lynch & Co.; Wells Fargo bought Wachovia Corp.; and JPMorgan Chase acquired failed Bear Stearns Cos. and Washington Mutual Inc. Most analysts agree that it's too soon for these banks to have reaped any substantial benefits from the acquisitions in the fourth quarter.

Citigroup, Morgan Stanley merge brokerages

2009-01-13T23:30:00.000+08:00

Citigroup, trying to slim down, will combine brokerage business with Morgan Stanley's

Madlen Read, AP Business Writer
Tuesday January 13, 2009, 5:28 pm EST

NEW YORK (AP) -- Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley agreed Tuesday to combine their brokerages in a deal that shows how much Citigroup wants to slim down and build up cash.

Morgan Stanley is paying Citigroup $2.7 billion for a 51 percent stake in the joint venture. Citigroup will have a 49 percent stake.

Citigroup's retail brokerage, Smith Barney, was once the crown jewel in its wealth management business.

The new unit, to be called Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, will have more than 20,000 advisors, $1.7 trillion in client assets; and serve 6.8 million households around the world, the companies said.

Citigroup will recognize a pretax gain of about $9.5 billion because of the deal, or about $5.8 billion after taxes, the companies said. The joint venture is expected to achieve total cost savings for the two companies of around $1.1 billion.

The deal was announced after the market closed. Shares of Citigroup rose 30 cents, or 5.4 percent, to $5.90 on Tuesday, and Morgan Stanley shares rose 7 cents to $18.86.

CEO Vikram Pandit has been saying for months that he plans to sell assets to raise cash, but the executive, according to media reports, is getting ready to announce that Citigroup is abandoning the financial "supermarket" model. That term described the aim of Citigroup -- created over the last couple decades by former CEO Sandy Weill -- to service all of individuals' and businesses' financial needs, from saving to borrowing to investing to deal-making.

Citigroup has fared worse than other banks in recent years, particularly during the recent credit crisis. The New York-based company is expected to post a fifth straight quarterly loss next week. The government has already lent it $45 billion -- more than other large banks received -- and agreed to absorb losses on a huge pool of Citigroup's mortgages and other soured assets.

Some investors believe Citigroup is headed for a larger-scale breakup now that the government is involved and that President-elect Barack Obama is rethinking how to dole out the remaining $350 billion of bailout money.

William Smith of Smith Asset Management, who still owns shares of Citigroup, has been calling for a breakup of Citigroup for years and believes the government will force that fate, in piecemeal fashion, over the coming year.

"I think within 12 months, Citigroup no longer exists," Smith said. "The new CEO of this company is the government."

Green Power Partnership: National Top 50

2009-01-06T21:42:00.000+08:00

Green Power Partnership: National Top 50

As of January 6, 2009
source: http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/toplists/top50.htm

The Green Power Partnership works with a wide variety of leading organizations — from Fortune 500 companies to local, state and federal governments, and a growing number of colleges and universities. The following Top Partner Rankings highlight the annual green power purchases of leading organizations within the United States and across individual industry sectors.

These green power purchases help reduce the environmental impacts of electricity use and support the development of new renewable generation capacity nationwide. Purchase amounts reflect U.S. operations only and are sourced from U.S.-based green power resources. Organizations can meet EPA purchase requirements using any combination of three different product options (1) Renewable Energy Certificates, (2) On-site generation, and (3) Utility green power products.

Purchase figures are based on annualized Partner contract amounts (kilowatt-hours), not calendar year totals. These rankings are updated on a quarterly schedule. Find out how your organization can partner with EPA today! To view a top partner list, select from the chart below:

National Top 50 100% Purchasers Top 20 Retail Fortune 500
Top 10 Federal Government Top 20 Local Government Top 20 College & University

Annual Green Power Usage (kWh)	GP % of Total Electricity Use*	Organization Type	Providers	Green Power Resources
1. Intel Corporation
1,302,040,000	47%	Information Technology	Austin Energy, PNM, Sterling Planet	Biomass, Geothermal, Solar, Wind
2. PepsiCo
1,144,773,154	100%	Food & Beverage	3Degrees, Sterling Planet	Various
3. Dell Inc.
553,708,000	158%	Information Technology	3Degrees, Austin Energy, Constellation NewEnergy, Greenhouse Gas Services, Idaho Power, MidAmerican Energy, TXU Energy	Biogas, Solar, Wind
4. Whole Foods Market
526,995,000	100%	Retail	Austin Energy, Community Energy, On-site Generation, PNM, Renewable Choice Energy	Solar, Wind
5. The Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc.
470,216,838	100%	Food & Beverage	3Degrees, Sterling Planet	Various
6. Johnson & Johnson
434,854,733	38%	Health Care	3Degrees, NextEra Energy Resources, On-site Generation, PNM, Reliant Energy, Sempra Energy	Biomass, Small-hydro, Solar, Wind
7. U.S. Air Force
426,233,000	5%	Govt. (Federal)	3 Phases Renewables, Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Bonneville Power Administration, Colorado Springs Utilities, Constellation NewEnergy, Georgia Power, Minnkota Power Cooperative, NextEra Energy Resources, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Rocky Mountain Generation Cooperative, Sterling Planet, TransAlta Energy Marketing, WindCurrent	Various
8. Cisco Systems, Inc.
385,550,000	44%	Information Technology	Austin Energy, Silicon Valley Power/3Degrees, Sterling Planet, TXU Energy	Biogas, Biomass, Small-hydro, Solar, Wind
9. City of Houston, TX
350,400,000	27%	Govt. (Local, Municipal)	Reliant Energy	Wind
10. City of Dallas, TX
333,659,840	40%	Govt. (Local, Municipal)	Gexa Energy, Reliant Energy, Suez Energy Resources NA	Wind
11 (tie). Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
300,000,000	30%	Govt. (State)	Renewable Choice Energy	Biomass, Wind
11 (tie). HSBC North America
300,000,000	93%	Banking & Fin. Srvcs.	NextEra Energy Resources	Wind
13. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
285,000,000	100%	Govt. (Federal)	Various	Biogas, Biomass, Geothermal, Wind
14. Kohl's Department Stores
258,990,000	22%	Retail	3Degrees, City of Dover, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Sterling Planet, Sun Edison, WM Renewable Energy	Various
15. Kimberly-Clark Corporation
223,000,000	7%	Consumer Products	On-site Generation	Biomass
16. City of Chicago, IL
214,635,000	20%	Govt. (Local, Municipal)	MidAmerican Energy	Biomass, Wind
17. Starbucks
205,000,000	22%	Restaurants & Food Srvcs.	3Degrees	Wind
18. University of Pennsylvania
192,727,000	46%	Education (Higher)	Community Energy	Wind
19. DuPont Company
180,075,000	4%	Chemical	Neuwing Energy Ventures, On-site Generation	Biomass, Solar, Wind
20. Wells Fargo & Company
175,000,000	14%	Banking & Fin. Srvcs.	3Degrees	Wind
21. Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts
171,144,000	54%	Govt. (Local, Municipal)	On-site Generation	Biogas
22. U.S. Department of Energy
157,964,000	3%	Govt. (Federal)	Calpine, ConEdison Solutions, Mainstay Energy, Other, Pacific Power, Sterling Planet	Biogas, Biomass, Geothermal, Small-hydro, Wind
23. PepsiAmericas, Inc.
157,062,875	100%	Food & Beverage	Sterling Planet	Various
24. Vail Resorts, Inc.
151,311,000	100%	Travel & Leisure	Renewable Choice Energy	Wind
25. New York University
132,000,000	100%	Education (Higher)	NextEra Energy Resources	Wind
26. Staples
127,322,000	21%	Retail	3Degrees, Avista Utilities, Florida Power & Light, On-site Generation, Pacific Power, PECO/Community Energy, Portland General Electric, Tennessee Valley Authority	Biomass, Solar, Wind
27. Bloomberg LP
116,786,658	50%	Media, Print & Publishing	ConEdison Solutions, Constellation NewEnergy, Hess Energy Marketing, Other	Biomass, Wind
28. The World Bank Group
114,735,000	100%	Non-Profit (NGO)	WindCurrent	Wind
29. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
110,000,000	4%	Govt. (Federal)	Sterling Planet	Biomass
30. Mohawk Fine Papers Inc.
102,500,000	104%	Ag, & Nat. Resources	3Degrees, Community Energy, Sterling Planet	Wind
31. Lowe's
101,000,000	2%	Retail	Neuwing Energy Ventures, On-site Generation	Biogas, Solar
32. Office Depot
99,529,000	16%	Retail	Cadence Network Inc. (Clear Sky Power), Direct Energy	Biomass, Solar, Wind
33. State of Connecticut
98,201,876	17%	Govt. (State)	Direct Energy, Suez Energy Resources NA	Various
34. WhiteWave Foods Company
98,012,000	100%	Food & Beverage	Bonneville Environmental Foundation	Wind
35. Safeway Inc.
93,000,000	3%	Retail	3Degrees, On-site Generation	Solar, Wind
36. State of Wisconsin
92,400,000	8%	Govt. (State)	Madison Gas & Electric, We Energies, Wisconsin Public Power Inc.	Biogas, Solar, Wind
37. Sprint Nextel
87,600,000	47%	Telecommunications	Kansas City Power & Light	Wind
38. Pennsylvania State University
83,600,000	20%	Education (Higher)	3Degrees, Community Energy, Sterling Planet	Biomass, Small-hydro, Wind
39. Coldwater Creek Inc
81,252,000	100%	Retail	3Degrees	Wind
40. Nike, Inc.
79,820,000	72%	Clothing & Textile	Sterling Planet	Various
41. The Tower Companies
79,000,000	100%	Real Estate	Sterling Planet	Wind
42. U.S. General Services Administration / Region 2
78,930,000	34%	Govt. (Federal)	ConEdison Solutions, Constellation NewEnergy, PEPCO Energy Servics	Biogas, Wind
43. ING
75,449,000	100%	Banking & Fin. Srvcs.	Community Energy	Wind
44. Advanced Micro Devices / Austin, TX Facilities
73,680,000	122%	Information Technology	Austin Energy	Biogas, Wind
45. Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission
70,000,000	33%	Govt. (Local, Municipal)	Constellation NewEnergy	Wind
46. City of San Diego, CA
69,043,000	27%	Govt. (Local, Municipal)	On-site Generation	Biogas, Small-hydro, Solar
47. Oregon State University
66,680,400	74%	Education (Higher)	Bonneville Environmental Foundation	Biogas, Biomass, Wind
48. California State University System
66,189,000	9%	Education (Higher)	APS Energy Services, On-site Generation	Biomass, Geothermal, Solar, Wind
49. Montgomery County Wind Buyers Group
65,900,000	10%	Govt. (Local, Municipal)	Washington Gas Energy Services	Wind
50. Austin (TX) Independent School District
65,640,000	40%	Education

*Reflects the amount of green power as a percentage of total purchased electricity use.

Current and past Top Partners lists are available here for you to view and print:

January 2009 list (PDF) (4 pp, 86K, About PDF)
October 2008 list (PDF) (4 pp, 115K, About PDF)
July 2008 list (PDF) (2 pp, 96K, About PDF)
April 2008 list (PDF) (2 pp, 96K, About PDF)
January 2008 list (PDF) (2 pp, 98K, About PDF)
2007 lists (PDF) (12 pp, 455K, About PDF)
2006 lists (PDF) (10 pp, 511K, About PDF)
2005 lists (PDF) (8 pp, 226K, About PDF)
2004 list (PDF) (2 pp, 151K, About PDF)

For additional information on how your organization can join these Top Partners as Green Power Partners, please visit the Join Us page of this Web site.

Security tips for the 12 days of Christmas

2008-12-04T23:33:00.000+08:00

BT: Security breaches higher during holiday

By Zafar Anjum
04 Dec 2008

SINGAPORE, 4 DECEMBER 2008 - Businesses could be at risk of both physical and logical security breaches over the festive season and must take preventative action, warned Richard Moss, general manager, business continuity, security and governance practice, Asia Pacific, BT.

BT is a communications solutions provider.

“Christmas is a time to relax and enjoy, but criminals do not take holidays,” said Moss.

“Often over this period, there is a lower level of vigilance on many corporate networks,” he added. “Businesses that let their guard down and leave networks unattended afford potential hackers longer periods of time to gain unauthorised access to IT systems without being detected,” he said.

Security not just IT department’s responsibility

According to Moss, security is not only the responsibility of the IT department.

Many staff work from home over the long holiday, taking laptops and IT equipment off of the premises that may have sensitive and valuable data, he pointed out.

His advice—it is important that discs are encrypted and laptop backups taken.

Here are Moss’s tips to keep your business operating smoothly over the 12 days of Christmas:

1. Ensure all intruder alarms are working and activated and that the alarm company knows of the holiday date, and has an up to date list of key holders

2. Protect against fire: Take out all combustible rubbish. Safety test your Christmas lights and then turn them off while the office is shut, along with all other unnecessary electrical items, such as water heaters

3. Conduct employment checks on all contract staff and ensure that they are not allowed access to the office without supervision

4. Have all surface mail held by the post office for the holiday period

5. Give ergonomic and risk assessments to staff working from home and make sure that they have somewhere safe to secure their laptop and any sensitive papers, memory sticks and media in their home

6. Secure all home office routers with strong admin and WLAN passwords, and ensure up-to-date anti-virus software

7. Make sure that all servers have up-to-date patches

8. Check that all systems are fully backed up, with off-site backups and ensure that laptops are backed up, including any local e-mail files

9. Disable any wireless LAN access points that are not needed as these could be used to gain unauthorised access to networks and systems

10. Have all networks monitored by a third party for unusual activity which correlates the firewall and intrusion detection system logs for suspicious and unusual activity, and ensure that contact names are up to date with the provider of the service

11. Verify that any network monitoring systems are fully operational

12. Do not hold your office party on the premises, where IT equipment could be damaged

These security precautions are not for holidays only, Moss said. They should be taken seriously as a regular practice to guard your business against security breaches all the year round, he added.

How to Further Your Career in Treasury

2008-10-28T21:16:00.000+08:00

James Crichton, Hays - 28 Oct 2008

This article argues that taking a proactive approach to career development is vital. Where do you start and how can you ensure you keep moving forward?

The volatile marketplace is putting increased pressure on treasurers and their teams. Never has the role of the corporate treasurer held such an important profile at both the operational and strategic levels. The good news is that there is scope for ambitious and talented individuals to shine and get involved in a variety of projects.

Whether you're a graduate taking that first tentative career step or a director with many years' sector experience, actively managing your career is the trick if you want to maximise the opportunities that come your way as a treasury professional.

All too often we can let the daily pressures of our jobs consume us and forget to take stock of our current predicament and where we see ourselves further down the track. Career development is a continuous process and needs to be addressed on a regular basis.

The first thing to consider is your long-term goals. Where do I want to be and how am I going to get there? Answer the first part of the question and you can then begin to formulate your strategy that will take you to your career zenith. Remember that nothing is set in stone and your targets are likely to change over time as new opportunities arise or personal circumstances change.

Be Proactive

Much of a corporate treasury recruitment consultant's time is spent talking to candidates and clients about career development. One interesting aspect of these conversations is that each person has a very different interpretation of what career development means and what it involves. It can be quite enlightening listening to the different interpretations and ideas that each person has about this and also their unique approach to career management.

The most startling revelation is that some commercially astute, savvy treasury professionals, rather than taking a proactive and considered approach to enhancing their careers, actually leave their development in the hands of their employer. And remember, we're talking about people that have invested time and effort through university, professional qualifications and beyond.

Many people, when considering career development, look to explore external opportunities as they automatically perceive that this is the best way to gain more experience or to change the focus of their role. If this is their main reason for wanting to move jobs, then the soundest advice is to ascertain if this development is achievable with their current employer first.

Having the wherewithal to initiate discussions about furthering your development, for example assuming different responsibilities or the desire to gain new qualifications, can pay handsome dividends. By instigating career talks, you are highlighting to an employer that you are keen to progress and this sends a positive and unequivocal message to an employer.

Talent Management

Of course, one of the major benefits of working in treasury is that you are likely to be working in a multinational, blue chip environment. Such organisations will typically have formal talent management programmes that are geared towards the continued professional development of their staff.

Appraisals also provide a great opportunity to further your cause. Part of the process is to review your own performance and to discuss areas that you and your employer feel you might want or need to focus on. It's a great opportunity to explore areas that you enjoy and those that you find less fulfilling, as well as putting in place a plan to help you achieve these needs, whether they are related to training, management or attending industry seminars.

Perhaps the most important element of appraisals is to make sure that what you are looking to achieve is aligned with what the organisation is expecting from you and that both parties are working to common goals. If this is not the case, then you need to consider whether your expectations are unreasonable, for example if you have not properly communicated what you want to achieve or if there is a reason that you are being overlooked for opportunities that you feel are relevant to your personal objectives.

There will come a time when you will want to look at external opportunities. You may feel that your development is limited by the size of the organisation or you may just need a new challenge and a change of environment or industry. When considering external opportunities, it is important to establish your short, medium and long-term plans.

Keep an Open Mind

The nature of the treasury market, particularly outside of London, is such that there tends to be a limited number of relevant job openings at any one time for a particular individual. In practice, those that enter the job market with a very specific list of requirements to be gained from their next employer or job are going to find that the search can become overly restrictive.

Those that enter the job market with the express intention of working for a FTSE 100 company in Berkshire will quickly find that that they are only able to consider a very small selection of the good career opportunities potentially available to them.

However, if they have a good idea of the general direction that they want to take their career in, keep an open mind as to the type of organisation and consider each opportunity on its own merits, they will normally encounter a variety of interesting opportunities. This has particular relevance to the early stages of your career, as those that try to define their path too strongly can miss out on opportunities that they may not even be aware existed.

The main thing to consider is what the organisation is looking for in the person and the role in both the immediate and longer term. You will need to assess if these fit in with what you have identified as important to your career. Why has the vacancy arisen? Did the last person move internally to a different role within the department? What is the company's policy on study support? Is there anyone else in the team studying? What are the potential development paths from this position and how long would someone be anticipated to stay in situ?

There is no hard and fast rule as to what one should do to develop, but if we take a snapshot of jobs that are currently being advertised on the Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT) website, we can dissect the things that are currently important to employers. The positions range from treasury analyst to senior treasurer and highlight areas of experience or qualification expressly requested in the advert.

The actual requirements of the ultimately successful candidate will be more defined than appear on the advert - for example, half of the job adverts have not specified that the candidates require operational experience, however they will still be looking for evidence of this on prospective candidates' CVs. Nevertheless, these are all areas that have been specifically identified and are therefore significant.

Table 1: Required Experience or Qualifications for Treasury Jobs

Candidate Requirement Highlighted	Essential	Advantageous
Operational experience	50%	-
Qualified accountant	43%	14%
Influencing skills	36%	-
Graduate or post grad degree	21%	-
Specific systems exposure	21%	-
Change management	21%	-
Qualified treasurer	7%	43%

Operational experience is the most requested area of expertise. Treasury is a complex and technical field that allows for specialisation across a number of areas during your career. There is much to be gained from being involved in projects and working outside of your direct remit; the opportunity to work on other assignments or in cross-departmental working groups will add breadth to your knowledge. It can also raise your profile within the company and provide you with an opportunity to network with people outside of your normal scope of influence.

Almost half of the adverts stipulated the need for an accounting qualification and this is increasingly becoming an essential requirement. Having an ACT qualification is seen as an advantage but in most cases not a prerequisite for these treasury jobs. The ACT has developed a fast-track route for qualified accountants who wish to gain the AMCT diploma in treasury. This accelerated course of study significantly reduces the time needed to complete the qualification and offers the opportunity for qualified accountants to gain a practical qualification in treasury, risk and corporate finance to complement their accountancy skills base.

All-round Skills

So, you have the experience and the qualification(s). Job done. Not quite. Employers increasingly focus on your 'softer' skills and for roles at all levels they will home in on your ability to influence and manage both people and situations. Do you have project, change and relationship management experience? In today's competitive marketplace, you will need to stand out and it is these skills that are likely to convert your interview into a concrete job offer.

The message for you to take away is take responsibility for your career. Be proactive and fashion your approach to maximise opportunities, which will put you in control of your professional destiny. Balancing the 'here and now' of your current role with your longer term aims should mean that you continue to be fulfilled and motivated. Make a point of conducting a personal career review to keep track of your progression and the goals that you set yourself.

Life's Great Expectations!

NYT: Malay provocation - Philip Bowring

NYT: Malay provocation - Philip Bowring

Wed Jan 20, 2010 6:44 am (PST)

a layman's perspective of the word 'Allah'

hartalmsm: Why I use 'Allah' - a layman's perspective

Wed Jan 20, 2010 6:35 am (PST)

Are You Happy???

Hello Kitty: The Funny, The Weird, And The Horrifying

SEC bungled Madoff probes, agency watchdog says

SEC badly bungled probes of Madoff scheme, agency watchdog says -- incompetence, not corruption

Invasion of the botnets: Cyberattacks on the rise

Invasion of the botnets: Cyberattacks on the rise

New threats emerge from once-trusted protocols and services

New threats emerge from once-trusted protocols and services

Uncouth Facebook postings closing doors for job candidates

Definition of "MISTAKE "

10 Safety Hazards You Should Check Your Car for -- Now

7 Myths About Marriage and Retirement

Singapore's foreign minister describes ASEAN escape on blog

Singapore SMEs not prepared for disaster

Singapore e-payment provider to debut contactless debit card

Maxis, Visa goes live with mobile NFC payments

FCC to Handle Privacy, Net Neutrality

Dr Lee Wei Ling - Why I choose to remain single

Senate Gets Cybersecurity Bill

Conficker: Did all The Hype Help?

NSS Labs report touting the benefits of IE8?

Even in the US, some believe that giving up a bit of freedom can serve the greater good

Windows 7: Microsoft's first 'post-Gates' OS

State of the CIO 2009

State of the CIO 2009

Giant ponzi scheme uncovered

Criminals Target ATMs to Steal Credit Cards

The Credit Crisis Timeline

GDP could shrink 10%

TOP 50 SAFEST BANKS WORLDWIDE

GIC assets down 25%

Why Ho Ching quit

Windows 7 to include features to cater to enterprise

Nasa global warming satellite fails

UBS admits to helping defraud IRS

Banking giant UBS admits to helping defraud IRS, will pay $780M, open secret Swiss records

Lawmakers clash with SEC over Madoff probe

Lawmakers clash with SEC over Madoff probe; whistleblower promises more evidence

Obama caps executive pay tied to bailout money

Renewable energy: Air force one

America has become the world leader in wind power

Since when you'll find whale meat in Sushi???

Wall Street braces for rush of corporate, economic data

Death knell for Citigroup's 'supermarket' model

Citigroup, Morgan Stanley merge brokerages

Green Power Partnership: National Top 50

Security tips for the 12 days of Christmas

How to Further Your Career in Treasury

James Crichton, Hays - 28 Oct 2008

Be Proactive

Talent Management

Keep an Open Mind

All-round Skills