An ankle sprain to Harbhajan has cast a cloud over India's hopes of having their first-choice attack back in action, following endless fitness issues in Sri Lanka. Dhoni said India will take a call on the offspinner on Friday morning. If Harbhajan does not make the cut, Pragyan Ojha will assume the role of lead spinner. Mohali's seamer-friendly reputation gives Sreesanth an opportunity to make the final XI as the third fast bowler, ahead of legspinner Amit Mishra. The batsmen pick themselves and, barring last-minute fitness issues, M Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara are likely to sit out.
India (possible) 1 Virender Sehwag, 2 Gautam Gambhir, 3 Rahul Dravid, 4 Sachin Tendulkar, 5 VVS Laxman, 6 Suresh Raina, 7 MS Dhoni (capt and wk), 8 Harbhajan Singh / Amit Mishra / Sreesanth, 9 Zaheer Khan, 10 Ishant Sharma, 11 Pragyan Ojha
Australia are waiting to see how well Doug Bollinger and Michael Hussey train after their last-minute dash to India from the Champions League in South Africa. However, it would be a surprise if either man was left out. The only change from the team that lost to Pakistan at Headingley in July is likely to be the inclusion of Nathan Hauritz, who has recovered from his foot injury, at the expense of Steven Smith.
Australia (possible) 1 Shane Watson, 2 Simon Katich, 3 Ricky Ponting (capt), 4 Michael Clarke, 5 Michael Hussey, 6 Marcus North, 7 Tim Paine (wk), 8 Mitchell Johnson, 9 Nathan Hauritz, 10 Ben Hilfenhaus, 11 Doug Bollinger.
Facebook this week added a few updates to its "like" button that will make the feature a bit more pervasive on the site.
The three upgrades are directed primarily at developers, but users will see the results in their favorite apps, Pages, and on the Facebook news feed.
"Since we launched social plugins in April, we've been listening to user feedback and working with developers to optimize the Like button to make it as seamless as possible for people to like content around the web and share it with their friends," Facebook wrote in a blog post.
The first change will allow users to "like" something within an application. Did your friend get a high score on a game you both play? If the developer enables this functionality, you can "like" it. Anything you do "like" will be sent to the news feed, and anyone who clicks on that mention will be directed to the app in question, potentially generating more traffic for developers.
Second, Facebook has enabled the "like" button for Facebook Pages. A developer can opt to put a "Like button" or a "Like Box" on their site, and anyone who clicks on it will be directed to the developer's Facebook Page.
Finally, Facebook introduced a new "like" button that includes a box count, or the total number of likes the app has received. As Mashable pointed out, this might signal the end of the Facebook "Share" button, which was introduced in October and essentially does the same thing.
In other Facebook news, AllFacebook.com reports that Facebook has filed a patent application for a "social CAPTCHA" system. CAPTCHA's are the words that some Web sites ask you to type in before you enter a secure site or make an online purchase, for example. A "social" CAPTCHA would apparently ask you to identify something you should know - like the identify of someone in a photo - instead of typing in a bunch of letters.
-pc mag
The new iOS 4.1 update for the iPhone and iPod touch offers security fixes and new features on different models. But does the new operating system change the speed of the phones? After running five benchmarks, we found no significant speed gains or losses on an iPhone 4, 3GS or 3G.
The benchmarks were first executed on the phones running the previous version of iOS, version 4.02. We then upgraded all the phones to 4.1. After running the benchmarks in 4.1, we found speeds on the various tests remained within about 10 percent of the iOS 4.02 results. Click on the charts below to see the scores.
Our benchmarks were split into three categories: processor and memory performance; application loading speed of a complex game; and Web browser performance. Processor and Memory
BenchTest 1.4 ($0.99 in the iTunes store) tests memory allocation, floating point and integer calculation, 2D drawing performance using CoreGraphics, filesystem writes, and some JavaScript functions.
Geekbench 2 ($1.99 in the iTunes store) tests floating point and integer calculation and measures sustainable memory bandwidth and memory performance.
Application Load Time
"NFSU Launch" is the time for the device to launch "Need for Speed Undercover 1.2.0" ($4.99 in the iTunes store) to playable mode. Web Browser Performance
SunSpider and V8 (version 5) are complex JavaScript benchmarks that test JavaScript runtime performance. The iPhone 3G could not run the entire V8 suite, so we picked two tests, "Richards" and "EarlyBoyer."
All tests were run with devices connected to a Wi-Fi network.
Suraj Randiv has been suspended by Sri Lanka Cricket for one match following the no-ball controversy that denied Virender Sehwag a century during Monday's match between India and Sri Lanka. In an extraordinary and unprecedented decision, he has also been docked his match fees for the game, as has Tillakaratne Dilshan, who was reported to have encouraged Randiv to bowl the no-ball. Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara has been advised to ensure that such incidents are not repeated in the future.
The decision, taken by a six-man committee set up by Sri Lanka Cricket, capped a day on which the issue - which involved a transgression not of any law but of the spirit of fair play - escalated beyond proportion. Upping the ante were statements issued by the ICC - which said it would wait for SLC to act - and the Indian board, which called for strict action. In Dambulla, on the eve of a crucial match against New Zealand, Sangakkara's routine press conference was consumed almost entirely by questions relating to the issue.
In a statement announcing the punishment, the SLC said the incident went against the spirit of the game. "Sri Lanka Cricket is extremely proud of its team and their achievements over the years. It is of paramount importance to maintain the discipline of the Gentlemen's game, especially with Sri Lanka Cricket being winners of the 'ICC Spirit of the Game' award for two consecutive years," it said.
With Sehwag on 99 and India one run away from victory, Randiv bowled a big no-ball that denied the batsman a chance to get his century. Sehwag's initial reaction was to shrug it off in typical manner but he later said Randiv had done it deliberately. Sehwag also speculated that Randiv was acting on orders from senior players in the side.
Sangakkara denied playing any role in the incident and said he hoped it was not deliberate. Though Randiv later apologised to Sehwag, SLC instructed the team management to probe the incident. Following the enquiry, Dilshan's role in the incident has come to light.
A mid-level Apple manager faces twenty-three counts of a federal grand jury indictment alleging that the 37-year-old Paul Shin Devine, a global supply manager, is guilty of wire fraud, money laundering, and kickbacks related to his position at the company. Andrew Ang, of Singapore, faces the same charges as well.
And if that's not bad enough, Apple itself has filed a separate civil suit against Devine, alleging that the Sunnyvale, CA-based (former) employee accepted more than $1 million in bribes and kickbacks from countries including China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.
According to the indictment, Devine allegedly used his position at Apple to acquire various bits of confidential information about the company. He would turn around and sell this information to more than a half-dozen Apple suppliers—including the aforementioned Ang—and both would receive payments for their efforts. Using the confidential knowledge, said suppliers would be able to better position themselves to bid for and receive Apple contracts.
The San Jose Mercury News reports that the companies in the indictment remained unnamed, but they're said to be involved in supplying materials for Apple's iPods and iPhones. "Apple is committed to the highest ethical standards in the way we do business," said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling in a statement. "We have zero tolerance for dishonest behavior inside or outside the company."
The somewhat-complicated scheme, reads the indictment, involved a number of U.S. and foreign bank accounts, as well as the falsified company "CPK Engineering," to process the payments. Devine allegedly attempted to conceal the money transfers using code words as to not clue his employer into what was actually transpiring, and would even go so far as to open the foreign bank accounts in his wife's name.
The Internal Revenue Service reports that Devine is currently in the custody of U.S. Marshals, awaiting a 1:30 p.m. court appearance this coming Monday in the U.S. Northern District Court in San Jose.
If you want to pick up a new app on an Android-based smartphone, you have one option with which to pay for your new purchase: Google Checkout. At least, for now—sources indicate that Google is chatting with eBay's PayPal business to bring the latter as a secondary option for smartphone-based payments.
While that doesn't necessarily help the speed of the transaction—Google Checkout is, after all, is still a fairly convenient method for purchasing applications—it does help Google attract users who, for whatever reason, have simply opted not to use Google's single payment service for their purchases.
Integrating Paypal would open up Android phones to the service's 87 million active accounts, which would surely go a long way toward increasing the propensity of a user to pick up a new application on a whim—especially if the Paypal service is integrated into the mobile operating system in a similar style to how purchases work on Apple's App Store.
"As an Android user, I'd certainly be more inclined to buy apps from the Android Market if PayPal was a payment option," writes Intomobile's Marc Flores. "Make it a one-click feature and perhaps I'll even go nuts loading my EVO 4G with new applications."
Neither Paypal nor Google are discussing the alleged talks, which may or may not lead to a finalized deal between the two companies, reports Bloomberg.
According to the research firm Gartner, Google's Android operating system is now the most popular piece of smartphone software in the United States. Sales of Android-based devices rank third of any smartphone in the world in 2010 thus far, nestled behind RIM and Symbian's respective sales of 11.2 million and 22.3 million units. Apple's iPhone sales rank fourth at 8.7 million, or a market share of 14.2 percent to Android's 17.2 percent.
It's quite a turnaround from this same time period one year ago, when Apple commanded 13 percent of the market to Android's 1.8, and Symbian carried the majority market share at 51 percent. Microsoft's Windows mobile phones continue to lag with only 3 million units sold in 2010, a market share of a paltry 5 percent (itself, a decrease from 2009's 9.3 percent) -pcmag
Google on Thursday introduced the next generation of interaction with its Android operating system: voice-driven actions.
Google executives outlined 12 new "Voice Actions for Android," including phone calls, reminder e-mails, direction search, and music search. (Searching for generic links, a traditional function of Android, is number 13.) The app is called "Voice Search," requires Android 2.2, and is available in the Android Market now, Google executives said.
A second improvement, dubbed "Chrome to Phone," allows users to click on a new "mobile phone" icon to send links, YouTube videos, even directions, to the phone. So far, the features are exclusive to Android phones and U.S. English, although the capabilities will be moved to other languages and other operating systems (including the iPhone) in the future, executives said. "It's probably, on Android, the easiest," said Hugo Barra, director of product management for Google.
Voice actions can be triggered by clicking the "microphone" icon on the screen. Saying "call John Smith at home" will trigger the contacts list and voice dialer, "find art museums in Amsterdam" would launch a Google Maps application, and "listen to Ace of Base" will search for music from the artist on Pandora, Last.fm, or another music application. A "note to self" command, meanwhile, will send an automated e-mail to a default e-mail address. If Android is confused about which application to use, or a location, it will present a list of choices.
Within the phone, the microprocessor can power just hundreds or thousands of MIPS, a measure of processing power. But connecting the phone to the cloud allows the phone to basically put a supercomputer in your pocket, Barra said.
Voice actions allow the user to essentially command the phone's actions, where previous iterations have focused on looking for links. Google has no plans to add sponsored search listing, and the company will use your location if you provide it. Barra said that there is a roadmap to increasing the capabilities of the voice actions, including the possibility for adding a scripting language. "There's a place where you want to type, and there's a time and place where you want to use voice," said Dave Burke, an engineering manager at Google and the author of the "Chrome to Phone" function. About 25 percent of the data Google processes via Android is search data, Barra said.
"Chrome to Phone" is as described: within Chrome, clicking the "phone" icon sends a search result, a YouTube link, or directions directly to an Android 2.2 phone. The Chrome to Phone capability is a Chrome extension, and is available on the App Market, Burke said. For now, the transfer is one-way; data can not be sent from the phone to the PC, Barra said. The phone-to-PC capability may be added in the future, Barra said. -pcmag
India jumped into the BlackBerry controversy Thursday by demanding that Research in Motion allow Indian law enforcement access to Blackberry Enterprise Service and Blackberry Messenger Service data by Aug. 31.
If RIM refuses, the country will "take steps to block these two services from the network," India's Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement.
India wants its law enforcement agencies to have access to the information traveling via BES and BBM for surveillance purposes. The country already has access to BlackBerry voice, text, and Internet services, the ministry said.
"Although RIM cannot disclose confidential regulatory discussions that take place with any government, RIM assures its customers that it genuinely tries to be as cooperative as possible with governments in the spirit of supporting legal and national security requirements, while also preserving the lawful needs of citizens and corporations," RIM said in a statement.
RIM said it has "drawn a firm line" and insisted that any carriers that provide BlackBerry services adhere to four basic principles: the carriers' capabilities be limited to the strict context of lawful access and national security requirements; the carriers' capabilities must be technology and vendor neutral; no changes will be made to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customer since; and RIM maintains a consistent global standard for lawful access requirements that does not include special deals for specific countries.
India is just the latest country to threaten to shut down BlackBerry services. Earlier this month, the United Arab Emirates said it would block BlackBerry services by Oct. 11 over similar concerns. Saudi Arabia followed suit several days later, promising to shut down service by Aug. 6, but officials relented this week, and said they would allow BlackBerry services to remain while talks continued.
At issue is the encrypted network over which BlackBerry data travels. After the announcement from the UAE, RIM said it offers one BlackBerry enterprise solution to all its customers, and does not favor one country's government over another.
"The BlackBerry enterprise solution was designed to preclude RIM, or any third party, from reading encrypted information under any circumstances since RIM does not store or have access to the encrypted data," RIM said at the time. "RIM cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer's encryption key, since at no time does RIM, or any wireless network operator or any third party, ever possess a copy of the key. This means that customers of the BlackBerry enterprise solution can maintain confidence in the integrity of the security architecture without fear of compromise."
Twitter on Thursday unveiled its "tweet" button, which will let users share links on Twitter directly from the Web site they are visiting. About one-quarter of all tweets include a link, but sharing those links can sometimes be complex, Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner wrote in a blog post.
"Copying and pasting, link shortening, and bouncing between browser tabs just to share a link in a Tweet is too much work," Penner wrote. To simplify the process, Web site owners can now add a few lines of code to their pages for quick tweeting. When a user clicks on the "tweet" button, a pop-up box will appear. The Web site URL will already be shortened, so all a user has to do is add a message and click "tweet." It will be sent to a user's Twitter feed automatically, and that user can continue browsing. Twitter has also incorporated its follow suggestion feature into the tweet button. After a user sends off a tweet, Twitter will suggest a few people it thinks you might want to follow. Select those people or just click out of the box.
Twitter said the tweet button can be added to sites of all sizes – from recreational bloggers to major media organizations. More than 30 sites will start using the tweet button on Thursday, including CNN.com, Hulu, Gawker Media, The Onion, and USA Today.
"It only takes a few lines of code," Penner wrote. "The tweet Button will help publishers grow traffic and increase their Twitter following." For those wondering how this offering differs from the "retweet" buttons that already populate many Web sites, that was a feature produced by third-party company TweetMeme. Going forward, Penner said Twitter will be working with Tweetmeme and incorporating its "retweet" button into the tweet button.
"What does this mean? Firstly we will be assisting Twitter with the technical challenges involved with the button and secondly we will be working even more closely in the future on delivering real-time curation of the Twitter Firehose," TweetMeme founder and CEO Nick Halstead wrote in a blog post.
The partnership will result in the launch of new TweetMeme products, Halstead said, the first of which he unveiled Thursday. DataSift will give developers "the ability to leverage cloud computing to build very precise streams of data from the millions and millions of tweets sent every day," he wrote.
For more information, follow DataSift on Twitter.
For those who want to add Twitter's tweet button to their sites, meanwhile, can find additional information on twitter.com/tweetbutton.
-Pcmag
Apple provides a complete ecosystem for developers. All the components including hardware, the operating systems, and the developer tools are designed by one company, and they’re all designed to work together seamlessly — creating an easier, more intuitive experience so developers can focus on making great applications.
Apple Platforms & Technologies
iOS, Mac OS X, and Safari provide three amazing opportunities for developers to turn their concepts into reality. Built on the same core foundation, iOS and Mac OS X offer dynamic environments that will change what you thought was possible in software applications. With Safari, you can render today’s and tomorrow’s web applications the way they are meant to be seen.
iOS
iOS is the world’s most advanced mobile platform, redefining what can be done with a mobile phone. For developers, the iOS SDK and Xcode tools make it possible to create revolutionary applications that will set the bar for the next generation of mobile applications.
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system, built upon a proven UNIX foundation. Using the Cocoa frameworks, amazing audio & video capabilities, and a host of incredible features, you’ll see just how easy it is to create gorgeous, feature-rich Mac OS X applications.
Full description for Summer Jobs Worldwide 2010
Now in its 41st edition the best-selling Summer Jobs Worldwide 2010, is a comprehensive guide to all summer jobs abroad and in the UK. Perfect for anyone considering working this summer, this book is jam-packed with ideas to inspire you and help you decide where to go and what to do.
This guide covers all types of paid and unpaid work, comparing wages and includes descriptions of working as tour guides, fruit pickers, sports instructors, volunteers and many more sociable and interesting jobs. In addition to covering Britain, Europe, Australasia and the USA, this global book includes some stimulating jobs for the more adventurous in countries such as Egypt, Ecuador, Peru, and many more.
Summer Jobs Worldwide 2010 combines both fun ideas and practical information ensuring that you have an exciting but safe summer. If you want to have memorable experience, make some great new friends and earn some good money while you are at it, then this book will help you make it happen!
Publisher: Crimson Publishing Format: Paperback 416 pages Categories: Reference Works Directories Advice On Careers & Achieving Success Living & Working Abroad Tips & Advice Published: 23 October 2009 ISBN 13: 9781854585363 ISBN 10: 1854585363Sales rank: 284,638
As physician-guided robots routinely operate on patients at most major hospitals, the next generation robot could eliminate a surprising element from that scenario -- the doctor.
Feasibility studies conducted by Duke University bioengineers have demonstrated that a robot -- without any human assistance -- can locate a man-made, or phantom, lesion in simulated human organs, guide a device to the lesion and take multiple samples during a single session. The researchers believe that as the technology is further developed, autonomous robots could some day perform many more simple surgical tasks. "Earlier this year we demonstrated that a robot directed by artificial intelligence can on its own locate simulated calcifications and cysts in simulated breast tissue with high repeatability and accuracy," said Kaicheng Liang, a former student in the laboratory of Stephen Smith, director of the Duke University Ultrasound Transducer Group at the Pratt School of Engineering and senior member of the research team. "Now we have shown that the robot can sample up to eight different spots in simulated human prostate tissue."
The results of the Duke research appear in the current issue of the journal Ultrasonic Imaging. An earlier study reported in the January issue of the journal Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology described the Duke team's results on simulated breast tissue. In both experiments, whole turkey breasts were used. Raw turkey breasts are commonly used in medical research because the tissue closely resembles that of humans in texture and density, and appear similar when scanned by ultrasound.
The Duke team combined a "souped-up" version of an existing robot arm with an ultrasound system of its own design. The ultrasound serves as the robot's "eyes" by collecting data from its scan and locating its target. The robot is "controlled" not by a physician, but by an artificial intelligence program that takes the real-time 3-D information, processes it and gives the robot specific commands to perform. The robot arm has a mechanical "hand" that can manipulate the same biopsy plunger device that physicians use to reach a lesion and take samples. In the latest series of experiments, the robot guided the plunger to eight different locations on the simulated prostate tissue in 93 percent of its attempts. This is important because multiple samples can also determine the extent of any lesion, Smith said.
Smith believes that routine medical procedures, such as biopsies in other tissues in the body, will be performed in the future with minimal human guidance, and at greater convenience and less cost to patients.
An important challenge to be overcome is the speed of data acquisition and processing, though the researchers are confident that faster processors and better algorithms will address that issue. To be clinically useful, all of the robot's actions would need to be in real time, the researchers said.
"One of the beauties of this system is that all of the hardware components are already on the market," Smith said. "We believe that this is the first step in showing that with some modifications, systems like this can be built without having to develop a new technology from scratch." Advances in ultrasound technology have made these latest experiments possible, the researchers said, by generating detailed, 3-D, moving images in real-time. The Duke team has a long track record of modifying traditional 2-D ultrasound -- like that used to image babies in utero -- into the more advanced 3-D scans. The Duke lab invented the technique in 1991.
"We're now testing the robot on a human mannequin seated at the examining table whose breast is constrained in a stiff bra cup," Smith said. "The breast is composed of turkey breast tissue with an embedded grape to simulate a lesion. Our next step is to move to an excised human breast." The research in Smith's lab is supported by the National Institutes of Health. Other members of the team were Edward Light and A.J. Roberts from Duke, and Daniel von Allmen from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
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Global legislative and regulatory pressure continues to grow to prevent banks from becoming too big to fail. One of the potential outcomes is that banks may be forced to split retail banking (safe, low-margin business) from investment banking (high-risk, high-profit business) to create two (at least) legal entities. If banks want to avoid a return to the restrictive days of Glass-Steagall (or a modern counterpart), they are going to have to become much more rigorous and transparent in their reporting, risk analysis and financial controls. In other words, making the transition from "too big to fail" to "too smart to fail" means seriously rethinking traditional banking operations.
STEP 1: IDENTIFY YOUR BANK'S 'TOO BIG TO FAIL' RISKS. Improperly managed, a few key measures can create a big target on a bank's back. For example, if a bank can't prove liquidity levels, financial status or exposure to certain financial instruments and/or geographies, it risks being labeled as the kind of irresponsible institution that members of Congress say has necessitated the coming raft of regulatory change.
Banks that can't demonstrate the kinds of measures described above will lose market cap and long-term competitive advantage. For example, at the moment, the fear across both Europe and the U.S. is banks' exposure to financial institutions in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain -- if a bank can't prove a solid position or even fully understand its exposure to these markets, using technologies that support transparency and control, it is in danger of being forced to float off business units, which will greatly devalue the component parts.
Banks need to implement a comprehensive regulatory risk audit, taking worst-case scenarios into account for processes including regular liquidity reporting, complex/controversial financial instrument exposure assessments, and geographic risk reporting. If this review shows that a bank can't "see" information around liquidity and risk because that information is buried in the complexities of financial instrument creation, or because siloed parts of the business keep information locked away, it's a clarion call for greater transparency. The business can't make smart decisions about regulatory reporting processes without a clear and consistent view of risks across the global organization.
STEP 2: BRING IN TECH SUPPORT
Once a bank has identified the processes and protocols that keep information about risk hidden from key decision makers, it's time to consider which technology systems and solutions will support a transition to greater transparency. Ironically, compliance systems shouldn't be at the top of the list. Too often, these solutions sit at the narrow end of the funnel of information. By the time information gets to the mouth of the funnel, it's too late in the reporting process to measure the data's accuracy or its relevance to the organization's risk and reporting strategies. Rather, banks need to consider compliance in the context of the many business processes that take information from one point to another throughout the organization. Rules-based business process management systems that require equal ownership between business and IT managers can create an operating environment that lends itself to greater transparency.
STEP 3: BENCHMARK AGAINST THE BEST
Banks that have successfully positioned themselves for the new regulations share three characteristics: A customer-centric back office. Although customer service interfaces are typically the remit of the front office, companies that understand the relationship between data maintained in the back office and customers served in the front office have a more holistic view across the entire business.
Risk-aware culture. Not necessarily risk-averse, these banks have a culture of risk awareness that supports prudent decisions.
Agile IT infrastructure. Banks whose systems leverage the best in "enterprise 2.0" technologies, such as SaaS architecture and cloud computing, typically find it easiest to adopt systems that best support risk reporting, control and transparency. American military general Omar Bradley once said, "Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death." Be brave, banks -- the long-term rewards of smart reporting investments will be worth the short-term fear of breaking the budget.
Career site eFinancial Careers reported yesterday that there were 24% more postings for financial IT jobs in July 2010 than in July 2009.
This is part of a trend — further numbers the site editors gave me show that although new financial IT jobs were down by 12% in January and by 13% in February compared to last year, they ticked up in March by 3%, and then skyrocketed to a 37% increase in April, a 27% rise in May and 38% growth in June. This is cheery news for any out-of-work bank IT executives out there and for those who care about them.
Even more interesting is what the job listings show about which skills are in demand in the world of bank technology. eFinancial Careers shared the numbers of financial job listings mentioning specific IT skills (below) as of yesterday (the numbers change every day).
Most coveted are programmers who know C, C++ and C#. This reflects the fact that, generally speaking, programs written in C are still faster than those in any other language. But Java developers are also being hired, and database administrators and those with risk management expertise have strong prospects.
HSBC's North American chief executive expects the new U.S. financial reform law to cost it at least $110 million in annual revenue.
HSBC's North American chief executive expects the new U.S. financial reform law to cost it at least $110 million in annual revenue. The company expects its biggest hit from the Dodd-Frank law to come from restrictions on fees HSBC receives for processing debit card transactions, and from what its North American CEO called "changes to FDIC levies." The law increased the fees that U.S. banks will pay the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The sweeping law establishes a consumer protection agency, which could eventually deepen the cuts to HSBC's U.S. revenues, North American CEO Niall Booker told reporters on a conference call Monday. "We don't know what the impact of the new consumer protection agency will be, and exactly what tone and what action it will take, so that makes dealing with the cards business and to some extent the personal financial services business ... (and) trying to figure out what that would look like a bit more difficult," Booker said. HSBC, Europe's biggest bank, reported half-year profits of $11.1 billion Monday. Other elements of the law may hit the bank too, Booker said. The $110 million estimate "doesn't factor in any changes that we might have to make to the global banking and markets platform - albeit those will be small - or the impact of any further activity by the consumer protection agency," he said. The law's restrictions on proprietary trading "will have minimal" impact on HSBC, because its U.S. arm does not do much private equity or propriety trading business, Booker said.
(Reporting by Maria Aspan; Editing by Phil Berlowitz) Court: Reuters. All rights reserved.
Word Origin & History Mercedes
fem. proper name, from Sp., abbrev. of Maria de las Mercedes "Mary of the Mercies," from pl. of merced "mercy, grace," from L. mercedem (nom. merces).
Encyclopedia
Mercedes
city, east-central San Luis provincia (province), west-central Argentina. It is located on the Quinto River in a semiarid transition area between the Pampa (east) and the San Luis Mountains (northwest).
It was founded in 1856 as Fuerte Constitucional, and the surrounding lands were distributed to veteran army officers who guarded the frontier.
In 1861 the settlement was renamed Villa Mercedes in honour of the Virgen de la Merced (Spanish: "Virgin of Mercy"), its patroness.
From 1863 to 1865, the city was constantly attacked by Indians and mountain rebels; they were finally repelled and the rebel leader, Puebla, was killed. Water for irrigation from the Quinto River has enabled the area to become an important grain (corn [maize], sorghum, and rye) and cattle-producing region. Incorporated as a city in 1896, Mercedes has a large grain mill and refrigerator plants to process beef for export. Pop. (2001) 51,967.
