Sunday, April 28, 2013

Fujifilm's Finepix JZ700 compact shoots for speed with 8 fps burst, 200 fps video

Fujifilm's JZ700 compact camera goes for performance with 8 fps shooting, 1080P video

Camera makers seem to be scrambling to equip their compact models with wireless options, all the better to work with the smartphones that are trying to replace them. Fujifilm's taking a different tack with the 14-megapixel FinePix JZ700 by going for raw performance instead, like 8 fps burst shooting and 1080/30p video, both quite rare in low-end compacts. You'll also get an 8x Fujinon lens equivalent to 24-192mm, optical image stabilization, a 2.7-inch, 230K-dot LCD, up to 3200 ISO sensitivity, numerous filters and, interestingly, 200 fps video capture -- though the resolution at that speed isn't specified and we can imagine it's pretty low. Still, the camera's already hit the streets for around £130 ($200) and we don't know of any other near time-stopping cameras you can grab for that sum.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/26/fujifilms-jz700-compact-camera/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Saturday, April 27, 2013

Japan's SMBC said in talks for TPG's Indonesia bank stake

By Denny Thomas and Taiga Uranaka

HONG KONG/TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp is in advanced talks to buy a $1.2 billion stake in BTPN, an Indonesian lender backed by TPG Capital, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

SMBC's pursuit of Indonesia's seventh-largest bank by market value is another example of a Japanese company seeking to grow in that country's fast growing financial services market. A sale by TPG would also provide another case of a U.S. private equity investor raking in a massive profit from an early investment in an Asian financial institution.

In 2008, TPG Capital Management LP acquired a 71.6 percent stake in the Indonesian pensioners' savings bank, named Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional Tbk PT (BTPN) , for $195 million. The private equity firm's stake dropped to 58.5 percent after a rights offering in 2010.

SMBC, a unit of Japan's third-largest lender by assets Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc , is currently negotiating to buy 40 percent of TPG's stake, allowing it to abide by Indonesia's new foreign ownership limits for banks, the people added. The stake is currently valued at $1.2 billion, based on Friday's stock price.

SMFG and TPG declined comment.

The sources declined to be identified as the discussions were confidential.

TPG executives were in Tokyo this week for another round of talks, one person with knowledge of the matter said. It was not immediately clear what TPG plans to do with its remaining 18.5 percent stake, although the buyout firm may sell the shares in the open market, people familiar with the matter said.

Established in 1958, BTPN now operates as a full-fledged commercial bank with a market value of $3 billion and has more than 19,000 employees and over 10,000 branches.

EXPENSIVE BANK

BTPN is the world's seventh-most expensive bank among lenders with a market value of $1 billion or above, according to Thomson Reuters data. It trades at a price-to-book (P/B) multiple of 3.81, up from 0.7 in December 2008, when TPG struck the deal.

TPG is expecting a 25 percent premium over the current market price for the stake, which would take the deal value to $1.5 billion, giving it a P/B multiple of around five, one person familiar with the talks said.

A successful deal would give SMBC a foothold in the rapidly growing Indonesian economy and an under-developed banking market, where just 20 percent of working age individuals have a bank account, compared with nearly 100 percent in Australia and New Zealand. Indonesia, which is Southeast Asia's biggest economy, is forecast to grow at 6.2 percent in 2013, fuelling demand for consumer and corporate loans.

NEW RULES

Last year, Indonesia issued new bank ownership rules that limit single ownership in local banks at 40 percent. The new rules have made it difficult for buyers such as SMBC to get control of a domestic bank.

The same rule has delayed the approval of Singapore's DBS Group Holdings Ltd $7.2 billion bid for PT Bank Danamon a year after it was launched. The Indonesian bank regulator is expected to make a final decision on the DBS-Danamon deal in May.

TPG and its Indonesian affiliate North Star agreed to a five year lock up when they acquired the stake in 2008. That lock up expired in March this year. Since then, several suitors have held informal talks to buy TPG's stake. SMBC's bigger rival, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc had also expressed interest buying the stake, but those talks have since discontinued, the people familiar with the matter said.

It was unclear whether TPG and SMBC would announce a deal before Indonesian bank regulator would make a final decision DBS-Danamon deal next month.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc , people familiar with the matter said.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

PROFITABLE EXITS

A successful sale to SMBC would be the latest lucrative exit from bank and insurance assets for private equity in Asia. Many of those investments were made around the mid-2000s as U.S. private equity firms in particular snapped up stakes in regional banks and insurers at low valuations following the Asian financial crisis that crippled many financial institutions across the region.

Earlier this year, private equity firm Carlyle Group LP sold its remaining stake in China's No.3 insurer China Pacific Insurance Co Ltd , raking in a total profit of more than $4 billion, its largest-ever dollar profit on an investment.

TPG's previous bank exits in Asia include the sale of an 18 percent stake in China's Shenzhen Development Bank, which the firm acquired in 2004. That generated a return of about 16 times the initial investment of $155 million, selling the stake in two blocks to Ping An Insurance for a total of around $2.4 billion in 2010.

(Reporting by Denny Thomas and Taiga Uranaka; Additional reporting by Stephen Aldred, Saeed Azhar and Janeman Latul; Editing by Michael Flaherty, Gary Hill and Andre Grenon)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japans-smbc-said-talks-tpgs-1-2-billion-202802115.html

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Luis Suarez won't appeal 10-match ban for biting

Associated Press Sports

updated 7:50 a.m. ET April 26, 2013

LONDON (AP) -The English Football Association says Liverpool striker Luis Suarez has not appealed his 10-match ban for biting an opponent during a Premier League game.

Suarez's suspension begins immediately, meaning he will miss the last four games of this season and the first six of the next.

The Uruguay international was handed one of English football's harshest penalties for on-the-field misbehavior for biting Branislav Ivanovic's arm during Liverpool's 2-2 draw with Chelsea on Sunday.

Suarez could have appealed against the decision to add seven games to the regular three for violent conduct, which the FA deemed insufficient.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Liberty Global's $15.8B Acquisition Of Virgin Media Is Sailing Through EU Antitrust Court

Liberty Global acquires Virgin MediaReuters has reported, and TechCrunch has now confirmed with an independent source close to the situation, that the European Union's competition commission is approving the deal for Liberty Global to buy UK's Virgin Media for $15.75 billion, first announced in February when it was calculated to be worth up to $23.3 billion with debt factored in. As we understand it, there will be no antitrust conditions put on the merger, a crucial step for the two companies to close the deal more quickly.

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Monday, April 8, 2013

Father: Slain diplomat died doing what she loved

CHICAGO (AP) ? The family of an American diplomat who was among those killed in a terrorist attack in southern Afghanistan has taken solace in knowing she died doing what she loved.

Anne Smedinghoff, the first American diplomat to die on the job since last year's attack in Benghazi, Libya, was one of five Americans killed Saturday in a suicide car bombing while they were delivering textbooks to school children. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

The 25-year-old suburban Chicago woman was remembered as having a quiet ambition and displayed a love of global affairs from an early age. She joined the U.S. Foreign Service straight out of college and volunteered for missions in perilous locations worldwide.

"It was a great adventure for her ... She loved it," her father, Tom Smedinghoff, told The Associated Press on Sunday. "She was tailor-made for this job."

Anne Smedinghoff grew up in River Forest, Ill. ? an upscale suburb about 10 miles west of Chicago ? the daughter of an attorney and the second of four children. She attended the highly selective Fenwick High School, followed by Johns Hopkins University, where she majored in international studies and became a key organizer of the university's annual Foreign Affairs Symposium in 2008. The event draws high-profile speakers from around the world.

Speaking in a telephone interview Monday from the Afghan capital of Kabul, Solmaz Sharisi said her desk was next to Smedinghoff's at the embassy, where they both worked as assistant information officers. Working frequently with Western and Afghan journalists, the two became close friends, Sharisi said.

"What I admired most was her energy and enthusiasm and an unwavering commitment to the work she was doing," Sharisi said. "And it really did have an impact."

One of Smedinghoff's favorite projects was working with the Afghan women's soccer team and helping it gain greater acceptance inside Afghanistan. To ensure she would better interact with the Afghan players, Smedinghoff even practiced her own soccer skills on her days off, Sharisi said.

"She was young but she almost seemed like a seasoned foreign diplomat," Sharisi added.

Smedinghoff's remains arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Monday afternoon for an official ceremony, according to State Department, which also said the family had asked that the ceremony be private. The family was expected to attend along with Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, Ambassador David Pearce and other officials.

While a student in Baltimore, Smedinghoff worked part time for Sam Hopkins, an attorney near campus. He described her as ambitious "but in a wonderfully quiet, modest way."

Her first assignment for the foreign service was in Caracas, Venezuela, and she volunteered for the Afghanistan assignment after that. Her father said family members would tease her about signing up for a less dangerous location, maybe London or Paris.

"She said, 'What would I do in London or Paris? It would be so boring,'" her father recalled. In her free time, she would travel as much as possible, her father said.

Smedinghoff was an up-and-coming employee of the State Department who garnered praise from the highest ranks. She was to finish her Afghanistan assignment as a press officer in July. Already fluent in Spanish, she was gearing up to learn Arabic, first for a year in the U.S. and then in Cairo, before a two-year assignment in Algeria.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday at a news conference in Turkey that Smedinghoff was "vivacious, smart" and "capable." Smedinghoff had assisted Kerry during a visit to Afghanistan two weeks ago.

He also described Smedinghoff as "a selfless, idealistic woman who woke up yesterday morning and set out to bring textbooks to school children, to bring them knowledge."

Her father said they knew the assignments were dangerous, though she spent most of her time at the U.S. Embassy compound. Trips outside were in heavily armored convoys ? as was Saturday's trip that killed five Americans, including Smedinghoff. The U.S. Department of Defense did not release the names of the others who died: three soldiers and one employee.

"It's like a nightmare, you think will go away and it's not," he said. "We keep saying to ourselves, we're just so proud of her, we take consolation in the fact that she was doing what she loved."

Friends remembered her Sunday for her charity work too.

Smedinghoff participated in a 2009 cross-country bike ride for The 4K for Cancer ? part of the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults ? according to the group. She served on the group's board of directors after the ride from Baltimore to San Francisco.

"She was an incredible young woman. She was always optimistic," said Ryan Hanley, a founder of the group. "She always had a smile on her face and incredible devotion to serving others."

Johns Hopkins officials mourned her death in a letter on Sunday to students, faculty and alumni. Smedinghoff graduated in 2009. In the letter, University President Ronald J. Daniels praised her work on the symposium, her involvement in her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, and her involvement outside campus too.

"Her selfless action for others was nothing new," he wrote.

Funeral arrangements for Smedinghoff are pending.

___

Associated Press writer Michael Tarm contributed to this report from Chicago.

___

Contact Sophia Tareen at https://www.twitter.com/sophiatareen .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/father-slain-diplomat-died-doing-she-loved-090847524.html

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Paths to Publishing: A Writers' Panel Discussion

Friday, April 12, 2013 - 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Maxwell Dworkin G115
33 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA

Hear from published Extension School authors as they share their experience in writing and publishing.

On the panel is:

  • Historical fiction writer Christine Frost, ALM ?08 (The Veiled Mirror: The Story of Prince Vlad Dracula?s Lost Love and Dark Lady of Doona)
  • Journalist and historian Linda Kush, ALB ?05 (The Rice Paddy Navy: US Sailors Undercover in China)
  • Historical fiction writer James Redfearn, ALM ?02 (The Rising at Roxbury Crossing)
  • Journalist Paul Reid, ALB ?90 (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965)

Pulitzer prize-winning former Harvard Extension School instructor Paul Harding (Tinkers) will moderate.

Authors will be on hand to answer questions and sign copies of their books, which will be available for sale courtesy of The Coop.

Tickets are $5 and can be purchased online.

Source: http://www.extension.harvard.edu/hub/events/paths-publishing-writers-panel-discussion

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Sunday, April 7, 2013

State firms loom over Malaysian poll despite pledge to divest

By Stuart Grudgings and Siva Sithraputhran

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Wan Abdullah Wan Ibrahim, managing director of Malaysia's UEM Land, thought it was a "match made in heaven" when his state-linked property firm bought out Sunrise, a successful property developer owned by ethnic Chinese, in 2010.

Critics, however, saw it as a sign that Prime Minister Najib Razak's promise to roll back the state's overbearing influence in business and dismantle polices favoring ethnic Malays was already ringing hollow less than a year after it was made.

Najib will this month fight what is shaping up to be the closest election in Malaysia's 56-year post-colonial history. Despite his promise, state-controlled firms remain stubbornly dominant in Southeast Asia's third-largest economy and are even moving into new sectors like property.

Some high-profile government divestments turned Kuala Lumpur into Asia's IPO hotspot in 2012. But the enduring role of Malaysia's "GLCs" (government-linked companies) is stunting the private sector and entrenching an economic malaise dating back to Asia's 1997/98 financial crisis, according to a study by two Asian Development Bank (ADB) economists seen by Reuters.

"They can present evidence that they are divesting and yet move into new sectors and move vested interests to new opportunities," said Jayant Menon, one of the senior economists who wrote the report. "It's classic politics."

The GLCs are also central to policies favoring majority ethnic Malays over other races, including the economically dominant Chinese minority.

Najib wants to double Malaysians' incomes by 2020 but the economists' report is a sobering challenge to his contention that his government is breaking Malaysia out of its "middle-income trap".

"SOMETHING TERRIBLY WRONG THERE"

Najib acknowledged in 2010 that the state's overbearing influence on the economy was crimping Malaysia's growth and dynamism. He says the private sector must "return to the driver's seat" of the economy.

The government points to the $3.1 billion listing of palm oil firm Felda in 2012 and the $2.1 billion debut of IHH Healthcare as proof its plan to divest stakes in 33 firms is on track.

But critics point to an expansion of state involvement in other new areas, in particular the property sector, as evidence that vested interests within the bureaucracy and the ruling ethnic Malay party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), have pegged back Najib's early reform ambitions.

The ADB economists say in their report that, under Najib's rule, the real record on state firms was "more of a diversification than a divestment". It said the deterrent effect on private investment was contributing to Malaysia's status as the only major Southeast Asian nation with net capital outflows.

"What we do know is that investment has slumped in Malaysia, both foreign and domestic," said Menon.

"The fact is there is a net outflow of capital in a country that transformed itself with huge inflows in the past. Surely there is something terribly wrong there."

Private investment levels in Malaysia have picked up under Najib but have never fully recovered from the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s that signaled the end of rapid growth fuelled by exports and high foreign direct investment.

POLITICAL SETBACK

Najib dissolved parliament on April 3, paving the way for an election within weeks where he hopes to regain the two-thirds parliamentary majority the UMNO-led coalition lost for the first time in 2008. He came to power a year after that poll debacle.

In early 2010 he set out a transformative "New Economic Model", pledging the government would move away from being an "orchestrator" of the economy to being a "facilitator".

One stated goal of the planned 33 divestments is to help increase the share of national equity held by Malays to a long-held target of 30 percent. So far, 15 have been completed, but the pace slowed to four in 2012 from 11 in 2011.

Announcing the 2012 report card for his economic program last month, Najib hailed a 22 percent rise in private investment, compared with a 12 percent gain the previous year. That, however, includes spending by the GLCs.

Total committed investments under the program fell to 32 billion ringgit ($10.2 billion), down 82 percent from 179 billion ringgit in 2011. Foreign direct investment fell 26 percent to 29.1 billion ringgit in 2012.

GLCs play a big role across Malaysia's economy, taking up 56 percent of banking assets, 67 percent of the communication sector and 88 percent of utilities, according to the ADB.

Defined as companies with commercial goals but with some government control over decisions, they include Malaysia's two biggest banks, CIMB and Maybank.

Seven out of Malaysia's top 10 listed companies are majority-owned by the government, and GLCs make up about 36 percent of the stock market's capitalization.

"NATIONAL SERVICE"

Their political role has also been underlined in the run-up to the election, with Najib announcing that 40,000 employees of Telekom Malaysia and postal group Pos Malaysia would receive a 500 ringgit ($160) bonus.

He also authorized a 1,000 ringgit bonus for the 40,000 employees of state oil giant Petronas.

"They will think of it as a form of national service," an analyst with an investment bank in Kuala Lumpur, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said of the pre-election bonuses.

A flurry of recent moves by GLCs into Malaysia's property sector, like the $450 million Sunrise deal, has expanded the state's role in a sector traditionally dominated by Chinese business interests.

Teh Chi-Chang, director of the opposition-linked REFSA think tank, called them "backdoor nationalizations" that deter entrepreneurs in the sector.

In 2011, state investment firm Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) took a controlling stake in Malaysia's biggest property firm, SP Setia Berhad. State-controlled plantation Sime Darby became the largest shareholder in property developer E&O later that year.

The three-party opposition alliance, led by former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, has an outside chance of upsetting Najib's coalition, according to opinion polls. The alliance points to the expansion of state-linked firms as evidence Najib's reform agenda has stalled.

"Malaysia has one of the most vibrant private property sectors in the world and yet you have the government getting involved," said Tony Pua, a leading opposition politician.

"There's no point in having our GLCs competing on building luxury homes."

Malaysia's GLCs have increasingly gone international in their hunt for yield, despite the government's insistence that there are bountiful investment opportunities at home.

A consortium including Sime Darby, SP Setia, and Malaysia's Employees Provident Fund, bought Britain's Battersea power station for more than $600 million last year and plans to build luxury apartments on the site.

That helped put Malaysians ahead of Russian oligarchs and rich Chinese on the list of the biggest buyers of London property in the first seven months of 2012.

The government rejects accusations it is stifling enterprise in the property market, saying projects like a new publicly funded $8.4 billion financial exchange in the works in Kuala Lumpur will generate opportunities for companies.

Mohd Emir Mavani Abdullah, a director at the government's economic performance unit and a Felda board member, said the move into London property showed that government-linked firms were keen to avoid suffocating private firms at home.

The government also notes that many GLCs are strong performers, with the biggest 20 generating a compound annual return of 14.5 percent from May 2004 to April 2012, far outperforming the Kuala Lumpur market.

($1 = 3.125 ringgit)

(Additional reporting by Niki Koswanage; Editing by Paul Tait)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/state-firms-loom-over-malaysian-poll-despite-pledge-024715822--sector.html

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