Italians, backed by the Catholic Church, aim to stop Sunday shopping

Italians are fighting a government lift of regulations on business operation hours, insisting that the move will eventually hurt the small shops and values that have long been the foundation of the Italian business community.The deregulation, put into effect January 2012, removes restrictions on business operating hours, including Sundays and holidays. It is intended to stimulate competition in what...

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Egypt's contentious Islamist constitution becomes law

CAIRO (Reuters) - President Mohamed Mursi admitted on Wednesday that Egypt's economy faces serious problems after he enacted a new, bitterly contested constitution that is supposed to help end political unrest and allow him to focus on the financial crisis.The president said the economy also had great opportunities to grow, but earlier the Egyptian pound tumbled to its weakest level in almost eight...

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Syrian minister leaves Beirut for fear of arrest

 Syria's wounded interior minister cut short his treatment at a Beirut hospital Wednesday and returned home for fear of being arrested by Lebanese authorities, while Syria's chief of military police defected to the opposition, becoming one of the highest-ranking officers to switch sides.The twin developments reflected the deepening isolation of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, which...

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Sudan's Bashir says ready to meet Kiir to try to get oil flowing

- Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Wednesday he was ready to meet his South Sudanese counterpart Salva Kiir to try to move forward with setting up a demilitarized border zone and restart oil flows.His comments raise the prospect that the two could set aside their differences after signing agreements in September meant to secure their disputed border and to allow the South to resume...

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Egypt's Morsi: constitution dawn of new republic

 Egypt's Islamist president proclaimed the country's newly adopted constitution as the dawning of a "new republic" in a television address Wednesday, calling on the opposition to join a dialogue with him after a month of violent turmoil and focus on repairing a damaged economy.Mohammed Morsi sought to present the Islamist-drafter charter as the turning of a historic page for Egypt, but his speech...

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Fleetwood Mac Tickets Take Off Online at BuyAnySeat.com

Tickets to Fleetwood Mac’s upcoming 34-city North American Tour are creating traffic spikes in search traffic online for seats, said Felina Martinez at ticket marketplace BuyAnySeat.com. The tour kicks off April 4, 2013 in Columbus, Ohio and is the band’s first trek since 2009.Denver, CO (PRWEB) December 22, 2012It’s hard to believe that it has been 45 years since Fleetwood Mac’s first album, and...

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iPhone and iPad Affiliates Program Launched by iGearUnlimited

Leading online iPhone and iPad case maker iGearUnlimited is generating buzz with an affiliate program through Share-A-Sale. With two-tier commissions of 15% and 30%, it’s believed to be one of the most generous in the marketplace.Chicago, USA (PRWEB) December 22, 2012Internet companies often use independent sales people known as affiliates to help spread the word and generate sales. The best affiliate...

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LG unveils gorgeous new HDTV models with Google TV 3.0

Google TV 1.0 and Google TV 2.0 haven’t drawn much attention in the marketplace at this point, but that won’t stop Google TV 3.0-packing HDTVs from swarming the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada next month. LG (066570) is among the first to take the wraps off of new televisions with the third major iteration of Google’s (GOOG) software baked in, and it will be bringing 42-, 47-, 50-,...

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Verdant Analysis Announces Financial Analysis Marketplace

Investment Technology Company, Verdant Analysis, Announces Marketplace for Portfolios, Analysis Models and Financial Models(PRWEB) December 26, 2012Verdant Analysis, developer of financial modeling and investment analysis software will be launching its Verdasis Marketplace in early 2013.Verdant Analysis currently lets users build portfolios of U.S. and Canadian publicly traded securities and to analyze...

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Introducing TicketHurry - A Safe, New Way to Buy Tickets Online

Online shoppers can breathe easy, TicketHurry is a safe, low-priced marketplace for tickets to any event.(PRWEB) December 26, 2012Everyone has heard the news stories: “concert ‘A’ has sold out within a matter of seconds, demand is sky high!” These headlines seem dire but never again should fans lose hope in seeing their favorite performers live. Even when Ticketmaster and the local box office are...

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Volunteers track Santa's progress, answer calls

Most of the thousands of children who call the annual Santa-tracking operation at a Colorado Air Force Base on Christmas Eve ask the usual questions: "Where's Santa, and when will he get here?"So volunteer Sara Berghoff was caught off-guard Monday when a child called to see if Santa could be especially kind this year to the families affected by the Connecticut school shooting."I'm from Newtown, Connecticut,...

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Lawmakers play waiting game with 'fiscal cliff' deadline in sight

With only a week left before a deadline for the United States to go over a "fiscal cliff," lawmakers played a waiting game on Monday in the hope that someone will produce a plan to avoid harsh budget cuts and higher taxes for most Americans from New Year's Day.Though Republicans and Democrats have spent the better part of a year describing a plunge off the cliff as a looming catastrophe, the nation's...

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Bush spokesman says former president will spend Christmas in hospital after developing fever

Former President George H.W. Bush will spend Christmas in a Texas hospital after developing a fever and weakness following a monthlong, bronchitis-like cough, his spokesman said Monday.A hospital spokesman had said the 88-year-old would be released in time to spend the holiday at home, but that changed after Bush developed a fever."He's had a few setbacks. Late last week, he had a few low-energy days...

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Venezuela's Chavez improving after surgery: officials

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is improving after a cancer operation in Cuba and has started exercising, officials said on Monday, amid doubts over whether the former soldier is in good enough health to continue governing.Vice President Nicolas Maduro said he had spoken by phone with Chavez, who was walking and doing exercises as part of his treatment."We've gotten the best present we could get...

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Netflix says video streaming service hit by outage

Families across the United States will have to rely on other sources of entertainment after Netflix's video streaming service was hit by a Christmas Eve outage.The company based in Los Gatos, Calif., apologized in a company tweet for the outage Monday night.The company says on its Twitter page that the outage was caused by "some of Amazon's cloud infrastructure." Netflix says it was working with Amazon...

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This subscriber loss may haunt RIM in coming months

RIM’s (RIMM) share price popped by 8% soon after it released its earnings, buoyed by positive sales and earnings surprises. The fact that RIM managed to beat expectations on both fronts is a real achievement. The company has been able to manage the 50% annualized decline in device volume a lot more gracefully than most investors expected. The adjusted EPS loss of $0.22 was much smaller than the $0.36...

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Distracted Pedestrian Crashes WABC Meteorologist's Live Weather Report

WABC-TV meteorologist Lee Goldberg was doing a live weather report on the sidewalk outside the station's studios on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan today when he was unceremoniously interrupted by a pedestrian who was distracted by his cell phone.Goldberg was doing the live report when the pedestrian, looking intently at his cell phone, walked up behind Goldberg. The pedestrian veered off to the side,...

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RIM loses BlackBerry subscribers for first time

 Research In Motion's stock plunged in after-hours trading Thursday after the BlackBerry maker said it plans to change the way it charges fees.RIM also announced that it lost subscribers for the first time in the latest quarter, as the global number of BlackBerry users dipped to 79 million.In a rare positive sign, the Canadian company added to its cash position during the quarter as it prepared...

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When South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co announced last month it had overstated the fuel efficiency levels on around one million of its cars in the United States and Canada some investors were left fuming more than others. Some had already sold their shares before the announcement on November 2. The stock fell 4 percent on November 1 with about 2.2 million shares changing hands, the highest trading volume of the year at that point. "This smells pretty bad," said Robert Boxwell, director of consulting firm Opera Advisors in Kuala Lumpur who has studied insider dealing patterns. "It would have fallen into our suspect trading category," he added. Boxwell spots suspect trading by looking at how much the volume diverges from the average level in the days before a market moving announcement. In the Hyundai instance, the volume was more than five standard deviations, a measure of variation, away from the daily average of 598,741 shares over the past year. A Hyundai spokeswoman declined to comment. Research from the Capital Markets Co-operative Research Centre (CMCRC), an academic centre in Sydney that studies financial market efficiency, found that 26 percent of price-sensitive announcements in Asia Pacific markets showed signs of leakage in the first quarter of this year, the most recent period for which data was available. That compared with 13 percent in North American markets. The CMCRC says it looks for suspected information leaks by examining abnormal price moves and trading volumes ahead of price-sensitive announcements. Investors say one reason for leaks in Asia has been low enforcement rates for insider trading and breaches of disclosure rules. Enforcement in some markets is virtually non-existent. There are also misconceptions about whether trading on non-public information is a crime. "The idea that insider trading is wrong rather than smart is only being ingrained in the current generation of Asian players, not the older generation who are often still in the driving seat," said Peter Douglas, founder of GFIA, a hedge fund consultancy in Singapore. LOSS OF CONFIDENCE Japan's largest investment bank Nomura Holdings was embarrassed this year after regulatory investigations found it leaked information to clients ahead of three public share offerings. Nomura has acknowledged that its employees leaked information on three share issues it underwrote in 2010. In June, it published the results of an internal investigation that found breaches of basic investment banking safeguards against leaking confidential information and announced a raft of measures to prevent recurrence. The bank was also fined 200 million yen ($2.37 million) by the Tokyo Stock Exchange and 300 million yen by the Japan Securities Dealers Association. Such leaks hurt companies' share prices in the long run because investors put in less money if they feel they are not on a level playing field. "It is very damaging. You may not know how much money you've lost but if there is not confidence that the regulators are prosecuting and enforcing the rules on this then it undermines investor confidence and liquidity," said Jamie Allen, secretary general of the Asian Corporate Governance Association. The issue isn't being ignored. Many Asian markets such as Hong Kong and China have tightened their rules on insider trading over the past decade. Indeed some investors feel that while leaks and insider dealing are unfair, regulators in the region have more serious issues they should be tackling. "I would like to see the regulators spend more resources on investigating and prosecuting fraud against listed companies, which severely damages shareholder value," said David Webb, a corporate governance activist in Hong Kong, arguing insider dealing as less of an impact on a company's long-term share price. HTC AND APPLE A week after Hyundai's announcement about its problems in the United States, there was an unexpected move on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Shares in smartphone maker HTC Corp jumped almost seven percent on Friday, November 9, hitting the daily upper trading limit. On Sunday came the surprise announcement that the company was ending its long-running patent dispute with Apple Inc , a move seen as a positive for the stock. The Taiwan bourse announced it was investigating the trading patterns to see if there was a possible leak. When asked for comment, HTC referred back to a November 13 statement in which the company said it had kept the Apple settlement process confidential and has strict controls on insider trading. Michael Lin, a spokesman for the Taiwan Exchange, told Reuters on Friday that the bourse is still working with the regulator on the case. 'ENORMOUS LOSSES' Michael Aitken, who oversees research at the CMCRC, said many other Asian markets lack tough enough rules to force information to be released as efficiently and timely as possible, a primary reason for the prevalence of leaks. "Poor regulation hampers enforcement efforts," he said pointing out that few markets have the "continuous disclosure" rules used in Australia which require listed companies to release material information as soon as possible. In Korea, when Hyundai shares started to fall, rumours began swirling that news about a problem with some of its cars was on its way, but investors say it took the company too long to disclose what exactly was happening. "Hyundai at that time did not confirm the rumours. We suffered enormous losses because of this," said one fund manager, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media. An official from Korea Exchange declined to comment on whether it was investigating this case, saying only that the exchange looks carefully into possible cases of insider trading. Across Asia, regulators concede that many company executives and insiders still do not appreciate that leaking or trading on material, non-public information is an offence. "People don't even know they are engaging in insider trading, for example if their friends are talking about it on the golf course," said Tong Daochi director-general for international affairs at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, during a regulation conference last month. "We try to tell society, what are the criminal issues, what are the insider trading issues? For example we have held 27 press conferences to tell the public what kind of activities are involved in insider trading and to let people know that this is an active crime." ($1 = 84.2600 Japanese yen) ($1 = 0.6147 British pounds)

Research In Motion shares tumbled more than 10 percent on Thursday after the company reported the first ever decline in its subscriber numbers and outlined plans to transform the way it charges for its BlackBerry services.RIM, which hopes to revive its fortunes and reinvent itself via the launch of a brand new line of BlackBerry 10 devices next month, caught investors off-guard on its quarterly conference...

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Insiders steal a march in leak prone Asian markets

When South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co announced last month it had overstated the fuel efficiency levels on around one million of its cars in the United States and Canada some investors were left fuming more than others.Some had already sold their shares before the announcement on November 2. The stock fell 4 percent on November 1 with about 2.2 million shares changing hands, the highest trading...

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