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ProPublica Staff
Washington, DC, United States (ProPublica) – by Cora Currier Citigroup agreed yesterday to pay $158 million to settle a lawsuit over bad loans that the bank passed on to the Federal Housing Administration to insure. The whistle-blower who originally brought the case, Sherry Hunt, an employee of Citi’s mortgage department, said the company actively undermined the process that was supposed to check for fraud in order to push through reckless loans and get higher profits. The suit itself makes for good reading. We’ve pulled out the juiciest bits, and explain just what Citi appears to have been doing. Some background: The FHA insures one-third of the mortgages loans in the country, taking on the risk [...] Continue Reading…

NJDEP offering financial aid in effort to suppress the pests As the mild winter enters its final weeks, the three-killing southern pine beetle is showing disconcerting sights of early activity in the Pinelands and South Jersey and the state Department of Environmental Protection is gearing up to confront the pest. The DEP announced Thursday [...] Continue Reading…

The Media Line Staff
Jerusalem, Israel (The Media Line) – A score or more of people are hard at work on a balmy winter afternoon at TechLoft’s big open-area office in the center of Tel Aviv. Most of them are quietly glued to their computer screens. A few are meeting in a conference room whose Plexiglas walls are covered by flowcharts and jottings. Others are quietly consulting with one another. Off in one corner is a mini-kitchen and coffee machine and just outside is a big wooden deck used to host networking events. It could be the offices of any of hundreds of hi-tech start-ups in the city and its environments, but in fact the TechLoft’s space is the [...] Continue Reading…

Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – U.S. stocks opened mixed to higher Thursday fueled by lower than expected jobless claims and impressive earnings from General Motors. Just after the open on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 15 points. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and the NASDAQ were both nearly unchanged. Investors were buoyed by the a report from the Labor Department that showed initial jobless claims fell to a near four-year low. Also giving stocks momentum was an earnings report from General Motors. GM reported the largest annual profit in its history on Thursday, even as losses in Europe were a drag on fourth quarter [...] Continue Reading…

The China Securities Regulatory Commission is vetting an application from E Fund Management Co. to start the mainland’s first exchange-traded fund tracking the Hong Kong-listed shares of Chinese companies.

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Windsor Genova – AHN News News Writer
George Town, Cayman Islands (AHN) – Hedge fund manager MR Capital Management said on Tuesday that the current mispricing on Chinese reverse takeover (RTO) companies still offer opportunity to investors but due diligence must be conducted before investing in such firms. “It is not a normal mispricing situation. It is a mispricing in value of growth and quality companies. This could be a great opportunity,” says Mohannad ALRashoudi, founder and fund director of MR Capital Management, which is managed by the Cayman Islands-based Global Consumer Loyalty Fund Ltd. ALRashoudi’s advice comes as American companies avoid Chinese RTO companies in reaction to a regulation prohibiting U.S. accounting firms from opening their own [...] Continue Reading…

Tejinder Singh – AHN News Correspondent
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Chances of getting a work-related visa to the United States are slimmer for anyone with an Indian passport, according to a recent report that found immigration authorities increased the denial rate in the last four years. The increase resulted in many employers being unable to transfer their employees into the U.S. to work on research projects or serve customers, the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) said in its report entitled “Data Reveal High Denial Rates for L-1 and H-1 Petitions at USCIS.” The denial rate for India-born applicants for new L-1B petitions rose from 2.8 percent in fiscal year 2008 to 22.5 percent in FY [...] Continue Reading…

U.S. stock futures rose, signaling the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may rebound from its first weekly drop of 2012, as Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos won approval for austerity measures needed to secure rescue funds.
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SYDNEY (MarketWatch) — Greece’s parliament early Monday ratified austerity measures, in a move demanded last week by Eurozone finance ministers in return for fresh financial aid, according to reports. Violence broke out in Greece ahead of the vote on the bill which contains 3.3 billion euros ($4.35 billion) in wage, pension and job cuts this year, according to a [...] Continue Reading…

Tejinder Singh – AHN News Correspondent
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The CIA website stayed inaccessible hours after the first reports of the outage on Friday as an elusive group of hackers claimed responsibility in tweets. “CIA TANGO DOWN” read an Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account. According to defense pundits, the expression is military-speak for eliminating a hostile force. Earlier media reports cited Anonymous taking credit for crashing the websites of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which was quickly revived, and the FBI. With the CIA site still down, another tweet from Anonymous affiliated accounts noted the reasons of the attack: “We do it for the lulz,” referring to the popular online abbreviation “for laughs.”

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