Russian officials have three months to ditch foreign bank accounts

By Maria Tsvetkova

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian officials have until July 1 to get rid of financial assets abroad as part of President Vladimir Putin's campaign to stem corruption and capital flight, his chief of staff said on Tuesday.

Sergei Ivanov, held a rare Kremlin news conference to announce measures related to a drive to "de-offshore" the Russian economy - a term used by Putin in the first state of the nation speech of his new term last year.

Russia ranked 133rd out of 174 states in Transparency International's 2012 Corruption Perception Index. Its central bank chief said in February that almost $50 billion was sent abroad illegally last year.

Putin had signed two decrees designed to accompany legislation he submitted to parliament in February, which would bar many officials and state company executives from holding bank accounts, stocks and other financial instruments abroad, Ivanov said.

"If a person has foreign accounts today, we are giving him three months to get rid of these accounts," he said.

The bill Putin submitted to parliament was softer than one initiated within the legislature, which would have forbade officials from owning property abroad. Putin's bill also would allow officials to open foreign accounts through Russian banks.

Ivanov dismissed suspicion among critics who suspect the measures are mainly aimed more at bolstering Putin's image by portraying him as taking tough action to rein in a ruling elite, which many Russians see as corrupt.

"The fight against corruption is no public relations campaign or attempt to draw attention away from serious problems, it is a long war," Ivanov said.

He said corruption "discredits the authorities", likening it to a "rust that eats away at the very foundations of statehood and public morals."

The campaign to bring money back to the motherland fits in with Putin's appeals for patriotism since he started a third term last May. He has also played to nostalgia for the Soviet era, when officials were afraid to flaunt what wealth they had.

It comes at a time of heightened tension between Russia and the West, fueled in part by anti-American rhetoric in the ruling United Russia party and persistent pressure on foreign-funded advocacy groups in Russia.

(Writing by Steve Gutterman; editing by Ron Askew)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russian-officials-three-months-ditch-foreign-bank-accounts-185955559.html

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Gunmen raid 4 newspaper offices in Baghdad

BAGHDAD (AP) ? Gunmen in military uniforms burst into the offices of four independent newspapers in Baghdad, stabbing and beating employees, staff and officials said Tuesday.

One editor said he recognized the attackers as members of a Shiite militia, saying the raids came after his newspaper published an article criticizing a prominent hard-line cleric. It underscored the dangers facing the media in Iraq, one of the most dangerous places in the world for reporters.

Also Tuesday, gunmen killed two men and kidnapped another in a trailer camp on a remote gas field near the Syria-Iraq frontier. Iraq intelligence officials say al-Qaida militants are growing stronger in the border region, taking advantage of the lawlessness on the edge of Syria's civil war.

In Baghdad, some 50 assailants participated in the coordinated, brazen Monday evening attack, said Bassam al-Sheikh and Ali al-Daraji, two editors of newspapers whose offices were attacked.

The raiders attacked reporters with batons and knives and smashed computers and furniture in the offices of al-Sheikh's newspaper, al-Dustour al-Jadida, the editor said.

Al-Daraji said the attackers who came to his newspaper, al-Mustaqila, smashed windows and set fire to a car. "It was so horrifying that we could not do anything," he said.

A health official said four newspaper staffers were hospitalized with stab wounds and another was badly beaten. A police officer said an investigation was under way.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media.

Al-Sheikh said that he recognized the attackers as militant Shiites belonging to a hardline group headed by cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi. He said during the attack they berated him for publishing an article in his paper accusing al-Sarkhi of trying to dominate the holy city of Karbala.

Al-Sarkhi's office was not available for comment.

The city, 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of Baghdad, is home to two revered Shiite shrines. In the last decade it has witnessed power struggles between Shiite militias.

"The message of the assailants was to shut mouths," al-Sheikh said. "This is a dangerous precedent," he said.

Al-Daraji said they had run a similar story, but also published a response from the Shiite cleric's office. He said the assailants did not say anything during the raid, and he did not know why the newspaper was attacked.

The two other attacked offices belonged to al-Parliman and al-Nas.

The four newspapers are considered medium-sized to small. The largest, al-Dustour, claims a run of 12,000 copies daily.

In response to the attacks Tuesday, blue-khaki clad police set up checkpoints through the middle-class Karradeh neighborhood, snarling traffic. Other security forces in drab beige khaki, masked faces and heavy weaponry deployed on a main Baghdad thoroughfare.

Government officials were not available to comment.

Iraq is ranked among the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Hundreds were killed in the country since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

But such attacks have been less common of late. The last major attack on reporters was the slaying of a television presenter Ghazwan Anas in July 2012, who worked for a channel in the predominantly Sunni northern city of Mosul.

Also in Iraq, a provincial official said gunmen attacked workers at a remote gas field near the Syria border, killing two men and kidnapping one.

Farhan Farhan, the mayor of the western town of al-Qaim, said the gunmen set fire to workers' trailers at a camp near the gas field, killing an engineer and a manual laborer. The kidnapped man is the brother of the head of the Iraqi company building the camp site.

Farhan said the attack took place on Monday. He says the Iraqi company was contracted by South Korea's KOGAS to build the trailer camp before developing the gas field. No KOGAS employees were on site.

Al-Qaim is about 320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Baghdad, just across the border from Syria. Iraqi officials are taking advantage of Syria's turmoil and the porous border to rebuild their strength in this region.

____

Diaa Hadid contributed reporting from Baghdad. Follow Salahedddin at twitter.com/sinansm

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gunmen-raid-4-newspaper-offices-baghdad-143452803.html

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Microsoft's Kodu challenge invites the younger generation to design games

As part of its encouraging Imagine Cup, Microsoft is giving young ones that aged between 9 and 18 the chance to enter a game design challenge dubbed Kodu. With a renowned Xbox controller being used as the main interface, Kodu will allow kids and teens to create games on a PC or Xbox "via a simple visual programming language" -- which allows them to virtually layout anything from sculpted landscapes and decorated trees, to creating their own scoring system, gameplay and, of course, characters. The Imagine Cup Kodu Challenge, as it's more formally known, is now open and will remain this way until May 17th, with the eventual finalists set to be awarded a trip to the event in St. Petersburg, Russia. The winners, meanwhile, could end up taking home a range of prizes, including grants, cash and other goodies -- but, perhaps most importantly, also the utmost respect of all other challengers present.

Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Microsoft

Comments

Via: Forbes

Source: Microsoft

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/01/microsoft-imagine-cup-kodu-challenge/

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Cash for weight loss? Works better when employees compete for pots of money

Apr. 1, 2013 ? Do cash rewards for healthier habits work? Maybe, says a new study, if you add on one more condition -- peer pressure.

A growing number of companies are offering employees an opportunity to boost earning power at work via cash incentives to stay healthy. Under the Affordable Care Act, employers will soon be able to offer even larger financial incentives to prod healthy lifestyle behaviors among their workforce, such as quitting smoking and losing weight.

But people who are offered money for weight loss may be much more successful when awards are based on a group's performance -- rather than just their own -- according to a study led by the Ann Arbor VA Healthcare System and the University of Michigan Health System.

Group-based financial incentives led to nearly three times more weight loss than cash awards based on an individual's weight loss success alone, according to the findings that appear in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"There is broad and growing enthusiasm for rewarding healthy behaviors in the workplace, but there is little evidence on the effects of these strategies," says lead author Jeffrey T. Kullgren, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., health services researcher in the VA Center for Clinical Management Research and the division of general medicine in the U-M Medical School. "We anticipate more employers to offer these awards in an effort to help control health care costs while also improving the health of employees.

"We found that these incentives were substantially more powerful when delivered in groups, which has important implications for both policymakers and the employers who are considering offering them."

The study examined two types of incentive strategies among employees who were obese at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. In the first group, individuals were offered $100 each month they met or exceeded weight loss goals. In the second group, individuals were placed into groups of five people in which $500 was split among the participants who met or exceeded monthly weight loss goals -- upping competition by allowing some to earn more than $100 if other members didn't meet goals.

After each monthly weigh in, an automated message notified participants of their earnings -- or if they failed to meet their target, what they would have earned had they been successful.

After six months, the group approach overwhelmingly beat out the singles when it came to enticing people to shed pounds.

"Despite the health and economic consequences of obesity, the problem isn't getting any better, and there is great interest in identifying new approaches to combating this major health issue in our country," says Kullgren, also a researcher for the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

"Approaches such as 'The Biggest Loser' have received popular attention as ways to harness group dynamics to encourage weight loss, but the winner-take-all nature could be discouraging for everyone but the most successful person. We need more data to compare how different group-based approaches stack up against each other."

Starting in 2014, the Affordable Care Act expands employers' ability to reward employees who meet health status goals by participating in wellness programs. Rewards may include premium discounts or rebates, lower cost-sharing requirements, the absence of a surcharge, or extra benefits related to employer-sponsored health coverage.

Additional Authors: Andrea B. Troxel, Sc.D.; George Loewenstein, Ph.D.; David A. Asch, M.D., M.B.A.; Laurie A. Norton, M.A.; Lisa Wesby, M.S.; Yuanyuan Tao, M.S.; Jingsan Zhu, M.S., M.B.A.; and Kevin G. Volpp, M.D., Ph.D.

Disclosure: None

Funding: National Institute of Aging, of the National Institutes of Health (Grant RC2103282621). Support was also provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Michigan Health System.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jeffrey T. Kullgren, Andrea B. Troxel, George Loewenstein, David A. Asch, Laurie A. Norton, Lisa Wesby, Yuanyuan Tao, Jingsan Zhu, Kevin G. Volpp. Individual- Versus Group-Based Financial Incentives for Weight LossA Randomized, Controlled Trial. Annals of Internal Medicine, 2013; 158 (7): 505-514 [link]

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/Iq2hQHFQ4dc/130401181313.htm

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Writing and Speaking: SEO Articles

When writing your SEO articles, have you ever wondered how your images can affect your product's marketability or your written sales pitch's closing rates? We all know that images does in-fact help us optimize our contents, improve aesthetics, and increase the readability of our articles. But is that really all?
To help you get a better understanding of how to increase your image's effectiveness when writing SEO articles, let me share with you the psychology behind how images can affect your contents and what type kind of images to use for maximum effectiveness.
How images affect your SEO articles...
A LOT of people are making the same mistake of using ANY KIND of image which relates to their product thinking that it has the same effects. Provided that the image does relate to their product, it should be OK to use it right..? WRONG!
It'd be OK if you're a mediocre and weren't striving to maximize your sales but since we're trying to get better closing rates, you'd have to be wise in what image to use.
Don't just use ANY IMAGE; use an image that promotes positivity. This allows your viewers to make positive decisions like, shall we say... BUYING? What do I mean by pictures that promotes positivity? Picture this out... If you're selling products which helps in better credit management, would using an image of a person that's broke be better than using an image that shows a person having financial abundance or freedom? Give it a few minutes and think if there's even a difference or which image you'd be using.
In that scenario, the second image will have higher closing rates. Why you ask? It's mainly because the first image instills fear or a negative feeling. When people are on a negative mind-set, chances are they don't make the decision to buy simply because they're thinking negatively at the moment. Negative thinking, whether it's momentary or ongoing will promote more negative thoughts like distrust, doubt, scams etc... You seriously don't think anyone with that kind of thinking pattern would buy right? RIGHT!
So if you have products to sell like, let's say... shoes. Don't even think about using an image of a person using a worn-out shoes or anything to that effect.
Using this technique or psychology can get you wonders if you apply it. Reap its benefits. Be sure to use this psychology when writing your SEO articles.

Source: http://writing-asadeszw.blogspot.com/2013/04/seo-articles.html

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NJ Man Charged In Alleged Kansas City Casino Scam ? CBS New ...

Gamblers play slot machines at a casino. (Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) ? A professional gambler from New Jersey has been charged with cashing out his winnings in small chunks to avoid reporting requirements.

The Kansas City Star reports that 52-year-old Richard Dougherty won nearly $700,000 over 13 months from the Ameristar Casino in Kansas City. Dougherty was arrested there Thursday and appeared Friday in federal court in Kansas City.

Federal law requires casinos to file reports each time a gambler cashes in or out $10,000 or more. Structuring financial transactions so the casino fails to file the required report is illegal.

The Tom Hyland Card Counting team member has been released on bond. No attorney is listed for Dougherty in online court records.

If convicted, Dougherty faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000.

You may share your thoughts in our comments section below?

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Source: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/03/30/report-nj-gambler-charged-with-violating-reporting-requirements-at-kansas-city-casino/

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Deal Reached on Key Immigration Hurdle (WSJ)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

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