Google buys artificial intelligence firm DeepMind Technologies for £400m

Google buys artificial intelligence firm DeepMind Technologies for £400m
http://hits.theguardian.com/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.25.5/85985?ns=guardian&pageName=Article%3Agoogle-buys-artificial-intelligence-deepmind-technologies%3A2033484&ch=Technology&c3=Guardian&c4=Google+%28Technology%29%2CArtificial+intelligence+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CComputing+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology+sector+%28business+sector%29%2CConsciousness%2CScience%2CBusiness%2CLondon+%28News%29%2CUK+news&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CTechnology+Gadgets%2CCorporate+IT&c6=Samuel+Gibbs&c7=2014%2F01%2F27+06%3A49&c8=2033484&c9=Article&c10=News&c13=&c19=GUK&c47=UK&c64=UK&c65=Google+buys+artificial+intelligence+firm+DeepMind+Technologies+for+%C2%A3400m&c66=News&c67=nextgen-compatible&c72=&c73=&c74=&c75=&h2=GU%2FNews%2FTechnology%2FGoogle

London-based firm set up by chess-prodigy-turned-neuroscientist is Google’s biggest ever European acquisition

A two-year-old British technology company set up by a former child chess prodigy who became a groundbreaking neuroscientist has become Google’s largest European acquisition.

The search giant is spending £400m ($ 625m) on DeepMind Technologies, a London-based firm set up in 2012, which recently developed a computer system capable of understanding and playing an Atari computer game simply by looking at it on a screen as a human would.

The artificial intelligence (AI) firm was created by Demis Hassabis, 37. Described as “very brilliant” by his peers, he was a chess master by 13, completed his A-levels two years early and at 17 was lead programmer on the classic game Theme Park at the videogames company Bullfrog. In 1999, aged 23, he won the Mind Sports Olympiad – an annual international multi-disciplined competition for games of mental skill. He won it a record five times before retiring in 2003 from competitive play.

Born in north London, Hassabis also carried out research on brain-damaged patients which established that being able to imagine experiences is key to being able to remember past events.

DeepMind reportedly competed with Google and other AI companies for talent, and Google’s chief executive, Larry Page, is said to have led the deal himself after an earlier approach from Facebook was turned down.

Sources close to the purchase indicated that the technology would be built into Google’s search systems, rather than becoming part of its fast-expanding robotics division. Google has bought eight robotics companies, including Bot & Dolly which made the computer-controlled cameras used in the film “Gravity”.

“DeepMind was generally interested in reinforcement learning, and in deep learning, which is very useful in mining so called ‘big data’, something Google has a lot of and is interested in processing,” said Murray Shanahan, a professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London.

Google uses AI to understand search queries that have been written as spoken, as well as pattern recognition for image search. Its translation service also relies heavily on AI to understand the context of words and their meaning in different situations and sentences.

The broader question of whether AI technology could be misused or pose a threat to humans has led to the creation of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, which notes that “many scientists are concerned that developments in human technology may soon pose new, extinction-level risks to our species as a whole”.

The DeepMind acquisition is conditional on Google setting up an internal ethics board, sources told The Information.

Google confirmed the deal but would not supply any details.

Google’s other recent acquisitions have included the $ 3.2bn purchase of the smart fire alarm company Nest, described by Google’s Eric Schmidt as “an important bet” which will lead to products that are “infinitely more intelligent”.

Hassabis got a double first in computer science at Cambridge University in 1997, and returned to games as lead AI programmer on the landmark game Black & White. He set up his own games business, Elixir Studios, in 1998, but in 2005 he left for academia, working on cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence, and publishing influential papers on memory and amnesia.

After attaining a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from University College London in 2009, Hassabis returned to business in 2012 to found DeepMind Technologies, alongside Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman.

Google acquired a string of robotics firms in 2013, culminating in the purchase of Boston Dynamics in December, the most high-profile purchase at the time and a company holding contracts with the US military.

Google’s robotics division was put under the leadership of the father of Android, Andy Rubin, in December, combining seven technology companies to foster a self-described “moonshot” robotics vision.

Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, told the Guardian last week that the company was aiming to be the world’s best personal assistant, and said the only limitation was the capability of the technology itself.

“We haven’t held back because people aren’t ready – we have held back because the technology doesn’t work yet,” he said. “It’s very hard to do. But we want it to be the best it can be – with opt in, full permission – to help me get through the day, figure out my questions and suggest questions I should ask people.” He added: “People are doing research into how computers discover knowledge instead of reporting what they figured out – many people are on the edge of that, so it’s maybe five years away.”

• Google


• Artificial intelligence (AI)


• Computing


• Technology sector


• Consciousness


• London

Samuel Gibbs

theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Technology news, comment and analysis | theguardian.com


Read more about Google buys artificial intelligence firm DeepMind Technologies for £400m and other interesting subjects concerning NSA at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Six more US retailers hit by Target-like hacks, security firm says

Six more US retailers hit by Target-like hacks, security firm says
http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

IDG News Service – Cybercriminals have stolen payment card data from six more U.S. retailers using similar point-of-sale malware that compromised
Target, a computer crime intelligence company said Friday.

The conclusion comes from a study of members-only forums where cybercriminals buy and sell data and malicious software tools,
said Dan Clements[cq], president of IntelCrawler, which conducted the analysis.

The retailers have not been publicly named, but IntelCrawler is providing technical information related to the breaches to
law enforcement, Clements said in a telephone interview Friday.

IntelCrawler has also identified a 17-year-old Russian who it says created the BlackPOS malware, which intercepts unencrypted
payment card data after a card is swiped. Security experts believe malware based on BlackPOS was used against Target.

The teenager, who goes by the online nickname “ree4,” sold more than 40 copies of BlackPOS to cybercriminals in Eastern Europe
and elsewhere, according to forum postings IntelCrawler analyzed.

Clements said IntelCrawler is “90 percent” sure of its finding, based on the forum postings and sources it communicated with.

The forum posts indicate the teenager sold the malware for US$ 2,000 or for a share of the profits that came from monetizing
stolen payment card details, Clements said.

BlackPOS was also sold to “carding” websites such as .rescator, Track2.name and Privateservices.biz that trade in stolen card
details, according to IntelCrawler.

BlackPOS was originally called Kaptoxa, which is Russian slang for potato. Clements said the Russian teenager eventually renamed
the malware BlackPOS during a fresh marketing push.

Dallas-based security company iSight Partners wrote in a report earlier this week on the Target hack, which it called the
“Kaptoxa operation.” It says the hackers used a high level of skill to gain stealthy access to the retailer’s network.

Since early 2013, IntelCrawler has seen a brisk trade in login credentials for POS terminals on underground forums, suggesting
cybercriminals are still finding gaps in industry security recommendations for how payment card data is handled.

Cybercriminals were selling “remote desktop protocol” credentials for POS terminals, which would allow them access to the
machines, Clements said.

In many cases, default passwords had not been changed on the terminals, which were located in the U.S., Australia and Canada,
he said. In other cases, cybercriminals were successfully trying many combinations of usernames and passwords to find the
right one, known as a brute-force attack.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

Netflash

Read more about Six more US retailers hit by Target-like hacks, security firm says and other interesting subjects concerning NSA at TheDailyNewsReport.com

FireEye buys cyber forensics firm Mandiant for about $1 billion

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON Thu Jan 2, 2014 9:44pm EST

FireEye Inc. Chairman of the Board, David DeWalt (R) and Founder Ashar Aziz (L) pose with Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld outside the Nasdaq Market site in Times Square following the company’s debut on the Nasdaq exchange in New York, September 20, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

BOSTON (Reuters) – Cybersecurity company FireEye Inc has acquired Mandiant Corp, the computer forensics specialist best known for unveiling a secretive Chinese military unit believed to be behind a series of hacking attacks on U.S. companies.

FirEye shares jumped more than 20 percent after Thursday’s announcement of the $ 1.05 billion cash-and-stock deal, which FireEye said closed on Monday. It unites two companies with relatively new technologies for thwarting cyber attacks, and brings together two of the most-respected executives in the security industry: FireEye CEO Dave DeWalt and Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia.

While sales of older anti-virus products have been on the decline, security experts expect strong growth in both FireEye’s cloud-based systems for detecting malicious software and Mandiant’s software that analyzes cyber attacks.

About a year ago the two companies entered into a technology development agreement that made it easier to deploy their products together. With the merger, FireEye will gain Mandiant’s team of forensics investigators.

“They have these very strong Navy ‘cyber’ Seals who respond to breaches and are very good at what they do,” DeWalt said about Mandiant. He had previously served as chairman of Mandiant’s board.

“My aim is to create the strongest security company in the world,” DeWalt said in an interview.

FireEye, which has yet to post a profit, said the acquisition will be immediately accretive to earnings and expects the combined company’s revenue to grow about 50 percent this year. In comparison, Symantec Corp, the biggest maker of anti-virus software, has said it expects fiscal 2014 revenue to drop 3 percent to 4 percent.

Mandiant is best known for its forensics services. The company rose to prominence in February 2013 when it published a report detailing what it said were links between a Shanghai-based unit of the People’s Liberation Army and a long list of attacks on U.S. companies. Beijing denied all allegations in the report.

“If you combine FireEye’s advanced persistent threat technology with Mandiant’s endpoint protection, it really makes them a major force in the cyber-security industry,” said FBR analyst Daniel Ives.

Mandiant, which has long been profitable, generates sales of more than $ 100 million a year, according to DeWalt.

FIREYE FORECASTS

Also on Thursday, FireEye announced preliminary revenue for the fourth quarter above its previous estimate. It said fourth-quarter revenue would be between $ 55 million and $ 57 million, compared to its previous estimate of between $ 52 million to $ 54 million.

DeWalt has declined to say when he expects the company to be profitable.

FireEye, which has a market capitalization of around $ 5 billion, will pay for Mandiant with a combination of stock and cash. It issued 21.5 million shares and options, which were worth $ 939 million on Monday, when the stock closed at $ 43.69.

A company spokesman said it had about 140 million shares outstanding after the deal was completed.

It will also pay $ 106.5 million in net cash to Mandiant’s shareholders, who include Mandia as well as Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and One Equity Partners, the private investment arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Brenon Daly, M&A research director for 451 Group, said that FireEye was paying approximately 10 times Mandiant’s annual revenue. That is about the same revenue multiple that Cisco Systems Inc paid in its $ 2.7 purchase of Sourcefire Inc, last year’s biggest deal in the information security industry, he said.

“This is one of the first time we have seen one of the new high-flying IPOs use the currency generated through the IPO process to pull of this large a transaction,” Daly said.

DeWalt said he owns some shares in Mandiant and will disclose the size of his stake within a few days through a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

FireEye shares rose 23.51 percent in extended trade after closing down 5.69 percent at $ 41.13 on Nasdaq.

FireEye’s rivals include Palo Alto Networks Inc, which went public in 2012 in one of that year’s most successful IPOs.

Mandiant was founded in 2004 by Kevin Mandia, a former U.S. Air Force cyber-forensics investigator who co-authored an influential textbook on the subject. The company made its name by automating processes used to investigate computer breaches.

The company was largely unknown outside the computer security world until February of last year, when it fingered the People’s Liberation Army’s Shanghai-based Unit 61398 as the most likely driving force behind a Chinese hacking group known as

APT1.

Other security companies had published reports on cyberattacks, but had shied away from so clearly identifying their perpetrators.

DeWalt said FireEye would consider releasing similar reports now that it owns Mandiant.

“You will probably see us continue to do it when it is appropriate,” he said. “There is some incredibly egregious behavior.”

DeWalt is the former chief executive of anti-virus software maker McAfee who sold McAfee to Intel Corp.

Mandia was named FireEye’s chief operating officer. He said in an interview that he plans to move to Silicon Valley, where FireEye has its headquarters, from the Washington D.C. area.

“I’m in this for the long-term,” he said. “This is as exciting as heck for me.”

(Additional reporting by Noel Randewich in San Francisco; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Grant McCool)

• Link this


• Share this


• Digg this


• Email


• Print


• Reprints

Reuters: Top News

FireEye buys cyber forensics firm Mandiant for about $1 billion

First female law firm opens in Saudi Arabia

At Not Just The News, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us (See this article to learn more about Privacy Policies.). This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by Not Just The News and how it is used.

Log Files

Like many other Web sites, Not Just The News makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user"s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Not Just The News does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

• Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on Not Just The News.


• Google"s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to Not Just The News and other sites on the Internet.


• Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL - http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on Not Just The News send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

Not Just The News has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. Not Just The News"s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browser"s respective websites.

First female law firm opens in Saudi Arabia

Google Buys DARPA-funded Robotics Firm Boston Dynamics

Google Buys DARPA-funded Robotics Firm Boston Dynamics
http://truthstreammedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/bostondyn.jpg

(Truthstream Media)

Google has announced that it has purchased Boston Dynamics, the engineering firm which has produced all those creepy dystopian future robots for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), such as the Big Dog (a dog robot that can throw cinder blocks with an arm coming out of its head), Cheetah (the world’s fastest sprinting robot that can outpace humans) and Atlas (the one that’s eerily reminiscent of something out of a Terminator film…Skynet, anyone?).

The Times of India reports:

The deal is also the clearest indication yet that Google is intent on building a new class of autonomous systems that might do anything from warehouse work to package delivery and even elder care.

So Google is building a new class of autonomous systems that might do anything… To that end, Boston Dynamics is now the eighth robotics firm Google has bought over the past six months.

The search engine giant has been tight-lipped so far about what exactly it plans to do with all of these robots, but it is clear that Boston Dynamics is spearheading a revolution — a robotic revolution.

Gee. Great.

According to the Google exec who lead the Android effort Andy Rubin, the company’s robotics push is a “moonshot” — alluding to a grand scale project that could transform the landscape — but he has declined to comment any further. For Rubin, Boston Dynamics’ climbing, jumping and running array of machines are part of an emerging wave of autonomous machines, commenting that, “computers are starting to sprout legs and move around in the environment.”

Should Google’s latest purchase be a tad more than a little disconcerting to the average person? Multiple reasons why it should immediately come to mind:

1. Google is totally in bed with DARPA and the U.S. government.

Google, a company with a CEO quoted as saying things like “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about,” and “The Internet of things will augment your brain,” has strong ties to the U.S. government, particularly the CIA and NSA.  The Corbett Report noted that, “In 2006, ex-CIA officer Robert David Steele told Homeland Security Today that Google “has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command.”

DARPA is the Department of Defense’s research arm, complete with creepy projects that run the gamut from mind controlling a squid to change its colors to genetically engineering humans by adding a 47th chromosome. The two are already quite familiar with each other. In fact, former DARPA Director Regina Dugan left her post to take an executive position leading Google subsidiary Motorola’s special projects, and she has since made appearances to show off the new smart tattoos they’ve developed that can authenticate a person’s body like an Internet password.

In addition, Google has announced it will continue all current government contracts at Boston Dynamics.

2. Ray Kurzweil. Just Ray Kurzweil.

Kurzweil, the leading proponent of the singularity and transhumanism and someone who is all about reverse-engineering the human brain to create artificial intelligence, took a position as Director on Engineering with Google in December 2012. Guess what Kurzweil will be focusing on at Google. Just take a wild guess. If you picked artificial intelligence, you win a gold star.

Kurzweil has openly admitted he is all about ushering in a transhumanist future where AI computer entities are given bodies, where the minds of humans are transplanted into mechanical vessels and more. (See the Global Future 2045 project and Kurzweil discussing how we’ll all be immortal by 2045 for more on that.)

A firm like Boston Dynamics would obviously be part of Kurzweil’s future vision dream team (and all come from the common wellspring of MIT.)

3. Terminator: Will Google become the real-life sentient evil computer network Skynet?

Here’s some food for thought on this cleverly illustrated by Dejan SEO (even though we’ve all been thinking it for years now):

…And we haven’t even fully explored the part where the robots turn against the humans in a bloody futuristic war. 

While we’re on the topic of supposedly fictional movie plots coming true, it bears repeating that Google has already purchased seven other robotics firms just in the last six months alone.

If Google’s track record and current actions don’t sound like the perfect recipe for an exquisite and terrifying cybernetic revolt disaster, we’re not sure what is. See also the plot of The Matrix Trilogy.

Another film that comes to mind is Avatar, where robotic bodies are used by the military as a force multiplier. DARPA even currently has a $ 7 million project creatively codenamed “Avatar” with a goal of… wait for it… building robot surrogates for humans.

And those are just the three things that immediately came to our minds when we read the Google Boston Dynamics buyout headline…

(Let’s not even get started on the fact that ubiquitous smarter, faster and cheaper robots will ultimately mean less human jobs; that’s a whole other article entirely. Dystopic future here we come!)

www.simplesharebuttons.comTell Everyone

Truthstream Media

Read more about Google Buys DARPA-funded Robotics Firm Boston Dynamics and other interesting subjects concerning The Edge at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Geithner heads to private equity firm

Geithner played a central role in devising the response to the financial crisis of 2008-2009. | AP Photo

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a trusted lieutenant to President Barack Obama who played a leading role in the government’s response to the financial crisis, will join private-equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC in March.

On Saturday, the firm, which is headquartered in New York, announced Geithner will hold the titles of president and managing director.

Continue Reading

“Warburg Pincus has an excellent record of performance, a very compelling global strategy and an ethical reputation of the highest regard,” Geithner said in a statement. “I look forward to working with my new colleagues and to contributing to the firm’s continued growth and success.”

Private-equity firms’ role in the financial sector played a leading role in the 2012 presidential campaign, with Democrats criticizing Republican candidate Mitt Romney over deals involving his firm, Bain Capital, that led to layoffs at different companies.

For instance, in May 2012 the Obama campaign ran an ad concerning Bain’s role in the struggles of American Pad and Paper that featured former employees of the company criticizing Romney.

Defenders of the industry argue it can help turn around struggling companies, but its critics, as the 2012 campaign showed, point to instances where these leveraged buyouts and the efforts to nurse a company back to financial health can often lead to large layoffs.

Following his departure from the Obama administration in January, Geithner has been giving paid speeches and working on a book but whether he would join a Wall Street firm remained a topic of interest in political and financial circles.

As both president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank between 2003 and 2009 and as Treasury secretary, Geithner was an architect of the response to the 2008 financial crisis, which led to taxpayer bailouts for big banks and insurer American International Group.

Geithner’s supporters credited him for pushing a practical approach that prevented a complete meltdown of the financial system, but he faced criticism from some liberals and conservatives for being too quick to buy into the banking industry’s concerns both during the crisis and later as the 2010 Dodd-Frank law was being drafted.

Private equity firms also find themselves involved in the ongoing debate over whether to overhaul the tax code.

Private equity executives, hedge-fund managers and others working on Wall Street pay a special tax rate on profits-based compensation known as carried interest. Instead of paying ordinary income taxes — which top out at almost 40 percent — carried interest is taxed as a capital gain, generally at a rate of 20 percent. Top earners started paying an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income, such as capital gains, this year.

Democrats have long argued for increasing the tax on carried interest.

“If you look at any tax reform proposal out there that has any patina of bipartisan support, they believe we have to rethink how we treat investment income and carried interest,” Geithner said in July 2012 at a conference hosted by CNBC, according to Bloomberg.

“Obviously, carried interest doesn’t raise that much revenue,” Geithner said. “If you’re not going to do that, whose taxes are you going to raise?”

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Saturday, Geithner declined to discuss public policy issues.

“I made a judgment when I left Washington I was going to leave these questions to my successors, and I’m going to stay true to that,” he told the Journal.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

Geithner heads to private equity firm

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner to join private equity firm

Outgoing U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrives for the presidential inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington January 21, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Win McNamee/Pool

Reuters: Business News

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner to join private equity firm

U.S. should get mortgage firm data for probe, judge says

U.S. should get mortgage firm data for probe, judge says
http://currenteconomictrendsandnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/f7176__p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

By Jonathan Stempel

Mon Nov 11, 2013 12:56pm EST

(Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday recommended that a large firm that reviewed mortgages for Wall Street banks turn over e-mails and other data that may help the government decide which banks to sue for packaging shoddy mortgages into securities that fueled the financial crisis.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Martinez in Hartford, Connecticut, said Clayton Holdings LLC should turn over due diligence reviews it prepared for its clients from 2005 through 2007, e-mails between employees and clients during that time, and a database that was used in providing services.

Investigators had subpoenaed the materials on July 1 on behalf of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, which includes the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal and state regulators seeking accountability for the nation’s housing and financial crises.

The government alleged that Clayton’s due diligence reviews discussed “potential problems with individual loans making up the loan pools, as did internal and external communications at Clayton associated with the reviews.”

Clayton called the subpoena a “fishing expedition” on its dealings with its 193 clients, not just the 16 financial institutions that the government had advised were being probed. It also said it has cooperated with the working group and responded to “every government request for over six years.”

Martinez nonetheless concluded that Clayton did not show that complying with the subpoena was too burdensome, or that the government already had much of the information it sought.

“The government’s investigation into abuses in the residential mortgage-backed securities market is broad and extensive,” she wrote. “The relevance of the agency’s subpoena requests may be measured only against the general purposes of its investigation… Clayton has not met its burden of showing that the subpoena is unreasonable.”

Martinez’s recommendation now goes to U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny in Hartford, who oversees the case.

Marc Rothenberg, a partner at Blank Rome representing Clayton, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Thomas Carson, a spokesman for Acting U.S. Attorney Dierdre Daly in Connecticut, had no immediate comment.

Clayton was a “major provider of third-party due diligence services” to Wall Street, according to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s 2011 report.

“Because of the volume of loans examined by Clayton during the housing boom, the firm had a unique inside view of the underwriting standards that originators were actually applying – and that securitizers were willing to accept,” it said.

The government issued the subpoena under the Financial Institutions, Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, which it uses to recover civil penalties for losses to federally insured financial institutions.

FIRREA has a 10-year statute of limitations, versus five years for some securities fraud laws. Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) are among companies that the government has sued under FIRREA in mortgage-related cases.

The case is U.S. v. Clayton Holdings LLC, U.S. District Court, District of Connecticut, No. 13-mc-00116.

(Editing by Dan Grebler)

• Link this


• Share this


• Digg this


• Email


• Print


• Reprints

Reuters: Business News

Read more about U.S. should get mortgage firm data for probe, judge says and other interesting subjects concerning Business at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Obamacare Tech Firm Tried, Failed to Build Gun Registry in Canada

CGI, the Canadian company whose U.S. subsidiary built the failed Obamacare website, was once contracted to build a federal gun registry for the Canadian government, Breitbart News has learned. 

CGI’s contract was canceled in 2007 after a report by the Auditor General found that the Canadian Firearms Information System (CFIS) being built by CGI was “significantly over budget” and that it had been plagued by delays.

The Conservative government that took power in 2006 canceled CGI’s gun registry contract, and eventually repealed the Canadian gun registry entirely. 

In another parallel to the Obamacare controversy in the United States, the gun registry had been passed in 1993 over vehement Conservative objections, and was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2000, before finally being repealed in most of the country in 2012.

The failed gun registry was only one of CGI’s many Canadian failures, which included canceled contracts to build health care databases in the provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick. Despite CGI’s checkered record, the Obama administration awarded its U.S. subsidiary, CGI Federal, the $ 93.7 million contract to build healthcare.gov, part of $ 678 million in health care services contracts awarded to the company. 

Brian Lilley of Canada’s Sun News reported Monday on CGI’s history of failures, cost overruns, and conflicts of interest, including the gun registry: 

CGI was hired to make sure that the then-Liberal government’s gun control program was efficient and high-tech. It never worked the way it should have. Was it bad programming or bad government decisions? The truth is, we don’t know–we just got stuck with the bill.

Dollar firm as Syria action on hold, oil eases

1 of 6. A visitor walks past logos at the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo June 13, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Toru Hanai

By Lisa Twaronite

TOKYO | Thu Aug 29, 2013 11:43pm EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian stocks rose and oil prices tumbled as a possible U.S. military strike on Syria appeared less likely, while the dollar remained steady around a three-week high against a basket of currencies after upbeat U.S. growth data.

U.S. intervention in Syria in response to what Western governments believe was President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons looked set to be delayed at least until United Nations investigators report back after leaving Syria on Saturday.

On Thursday Britain’s parliament rejected British participation in any military action against Syria, while China said there should be no rush to force U.N Security Council action against Syria until the U.N. inspectors’ investigation is complete.

The dollar index .DXY was nearly flat at 81.933, after rising as high as 82.067 on Thursday, its highest level since August 5.

U.S. data overnight showed the U.S. economy grew at a quicker-than-expected annual pace of 2.5 percent in the second quarter. Combined with a fall in weekly jobless claims, this growth reinforced expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will begin tapering its asset-buying stimulus as early as next month.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was up about 0.4 percent, but Japan’s benchmark Nikkei stock average .N225 bucked the regional trend and gave up early gains, losing 0.7 percent and on track to end both the week and month lower.

Against the perceived safe-haven Japanese yen, the dollar shed 0.2 percent to 98.16 yen, moving back toward a two-week low of 96.81 yen hit on trading platform EBS on Wednesday.

“If investors sell emerging countries’ currencies and buy safe-haven yen, it will hurt Japan’s exporters’ shares, so we may have to brace for that possibility. Concerns on Syria have not faded completely, either,” said Masanaga Kono, senior strategist at Amundi Japan.

Some market participants said they expected profit-taking ahead of the U.S. holiday long weekend, although many investors would likely remain sidelined as the Syria situation continued to unfold.

Brent crude prices fell 0.7 percent to $ 114.39 a barrel after spiking to a six-month high on Wednesday on fears that any foreign military action in Syria would destabilize the Middle East, which pumps a third of the world’s oil, and would disrupt crude supply.

Gold eased 0.1 percent to around $ 1,409.31 an ounce, moving away from a 3-1/2 month high hit on Wednesday as fears over Syria prompted a flight to safety.

Copper prices were up 0.5 percent at $ 7,187.75 a metric ton, after sliding for a third day on Thursday and reaching their lowest price in almost three weeks due to the stronger dollar, concerns about Syria and slightly higher inventories. But they were still on track to mark their biggest monthly gain in nearly a year.

On Wall Street on Thursday, stocks ended higher in thin volume, taking back some lost ground after their worst daily decline since June earlier this week. Over the past two sessions, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index .SPX has gained about 0.5 percent, but remains down 1.5 percent for the week.

Looming reduction of the Fed’s quantitative easing has taken a toll on U.S. stocks but emerging market currencies have borne the brunt. The Indian rupee plunged to a record low earlier this week as policymakers scrambled for solutions.

“There are no easy choices for the central banks but the most urgent task is to move faster than investors can repatriate capital,” strategists at Jefferies said in a note to clients.

“This means making the unpalatable decision of collapsing domestic demand by raising interest rates,” they said.

On Thursday, Indonesia’s central bank raised its main interest rates, the latest country forced to defend its currency as investors pulled out funds from emerging markets in search of safer havens.

(Additional reporting by Ayai Tomisawa in Tokyo; Editing by Eric Meijer)

• Link this


• Share this


• Digg this


• Email


• Reprints

Reuters: Most Read Articles

Dollar firm as Syria action on hold, oil eases

German engineering firm Siemens to replace CEO

BERLIN (AP) — German engineering giant Siemens AG says it will be replacing its chief executive, who has drawn the ire of shareholders by failing to meet profit targets.

Siemens said in a statement late Saturday that its board will meet Wednesday to “decide on the early departure of the president and CEO” Peter Loescher.

A replacement will also be named.

Loescher, an Austrian, became CEO of Siemens six years ago. His hold on the job has grown shaky, especially in recent days after the company again issued a profit warning.

It was not immediately clear whether he would offer his resignation or be forced out.

Siemens is a heavyweight in Germany’s engineering industry with interests in high-speed rail, advanced medical technology, robotics and power generation.

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Business Headlines

German engineering firm Siemens to replace CEO

Lawmakers urge firm U.S. line on China in bilateral talks

Committee Chairman U.S. Representative Dave Camp (R-MI) (L) and ranking member Representative Sander Levin (D-MI) (R) during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the status of the IRS’s targeting of political groups, on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 27, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

By Paul Eckert

WASHINGTON | Tue Jul 9, 2013 7:13pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers influential on trade policy urged the Obama administration on Tuesday to press China in talks this week to halt the theft of intellectual property and curb practices that discriminate against American companies.

The letter to Obama cabinet officials on the eve of the annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue contained a laundry list of complaints, from software piracy to market and regulatory barriers and forced technology transfer.

“We remain very concerned that China has halted – and in many cases reversed – its market reforms,” the lawmakers said in the letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.

“China must move away from an economic model dominated by state-owned enterprises, trade-distorting subsidies, and economic protectionism,” the bipartisan group wrote.

“The theft of proprietary information threatens to undermine our economic relationship, is unacceptable, and must stop,” they said, noting that much of the theft was done by cyber means.

The lawmakers voiced support for the five-year-old Strategic and Economic Dialogue process between the world’s two biggest economies, but said China has been “woefully inadequate and incomplete” in implementing past agreements and called for more U.S. scrutiny.

The letter was signed by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, a Republican; Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Democrat; House Ways and Means Committee ranking Democrat Sandy Levin; and Senate Finance Committee ranking Republican Orrin Hatch.

The Obama administration must “use meaningful metrics to measure progress and to be aggressive in ensuring that China is fully implementing its commitments and doing so in a commercially meaningful way,” said the letter.

Among the Chinese practices the lawmakers said required more U.S. pressure to change were “indigenous innovation” policies that require foreigners to transfer technology to China in order to sell into the market, unscientific barriers to beef and other farm goods and favoritism to China’s state sector.

EXCHANGE RATE

They also repeated longstanding concerns that China deliberately keeps it currency undervalued to make its exports more competitive in international markets.

“China must stop intervening massively and in one direction in the foreign exchange markets, and move more rapidly towards allowing the renminbi exchange rate to be set by market forces,” wrote the lawmakers.

There was no immediate response to the letter, but U.S. officials outlining Washington’s priorities for the July 10-11 talks in Washington outlined a similar agenda.

“We’ll continue to, of course, push on exchange rates and to try to push forward on the market determination of both exchange rates and interest rates,” a senior Obama administration official told reporters on Monday.

The official said the U.S. delegation would also raise regulatory and financial favoritism toward Chinese state-owned enterprises and other policies “putting them at a competitive advantage and our companies at a disadvantage.”

Beyond specific trade and financial issues, U.S. officials say they want to use this week’s talks to learn more about economic reform plans circulating in Beijing under President Xi Jinping, who took office in March.

Kerry and Lew will host a Chinese delegation led by State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Vice Premier Wang Yang.

Lew, who visited Beijing shortly after Xi and a new cabinet led by Premier Li Keqiang took office, said he detected signs that some changes advocated by the United States were gaining traction in Beijing.

“If I had to guess, we’re going to see the direction of change be clear, that the moves toward more market-oriented reforms will be clear,” Lew told CNN, according to a transcript of an interview conducted on Monday.

“But the pace will probably be slower than we would like, or, frankly, than would be good for the Chinese people,” he said.

China has concerns of its own about U.S. policy.

Beijing has long demanded that Washington ease Cold War-era controls on the export of high technology and clarify the approval process for Chinese acquisitions of America companies. Chinese investments in U.S. assets sometimes draw opposition from U.S. lawmakers.

(Additional reporting by Anna Yukhananov and Doug Palmer; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

• Link this


• Share this


• Digg this


• Email


• Reprints

Reuters: Politics

Lawmakers urge firm U.S. line on China in bilateral talks

U.S. safety firm bolsters battery standards after Boeing crisis

By Deepa Seetharaman

DETROIT | Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:20pm EDT

DETROIT (Reuters) – Underwriters Laboratories, a 119-year-old U.S. company that develops product safety tests, is strengthening its lithium-ion battery standards after a string of high-profile battery failures that shed light on the technology’s weak spots.

Those vulnerabilities were highlighted this year when regulators grounded Boeing Co.’s (BA.N) 787 Dreamliner for nearly four months after lithium-ion batteries overheated on two separate jets in January, leading to a fire in one.

Even so, analysts expect a growing number of products to rely on the batteries, which are more powerful and resilient than their traditional counterparts. The global market for lithium-ion batteries is expected to double by 2016.

In articles published on its website on Wednesday, Underwriters Laboratories said it has developed a more vigorous test to prevent short circuits inside the battery cell that can lead to a fire. It is also refining safety and testing standards for larger batteries increasingly used in hybrid and electric cars.

“The number of lithium-ion batteries in use, the complexity of the lithium-ion battery cells and the numerous usage conditions make the design of safe cells and the development of tests for battery safety standards extremely challenging,” Underwriters Laboratories said.

The use of the batteries has greatly expanded in the past decade, powering everything from the Chevrolet Volt to iPads. The number of lithium-ion cells made worldwide ballooned to 4.4 billion in 2012, from 800 million in 2002, according to the Portable Rechargeable Battery Association, a trade group of battery makers.

Still, Boeing’s crisis illustrated how battery experts are trying to understand the risks posed by large-format batteries, as well as what causes internal short circuits implicated in the Dreamliner problems.

GS Yuasa Corp. (6674.T) of Japan makes the 787 battery and Thales SA (TCFP.PA) of France makes the battery system.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has documented more than 350 fires involving lithium-ion batteries since March 2012, Underwriters Laboratories said.

Underwriters Laboratories worked with officials at NASA and Oak Ridge National Laboratories to develop its internal short test. This method is now part of NASA’s battery qualification process for space flights.

(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman; Editing by Dan Grebler)

• Link this


• Share this


• Digg this


• Email


• Reprints

Reuters: Business News

U.S. safety firm bolsters battery standards after Boeing crisis

DOE IG flags $450K to ex-Rep. Wilson"s firm

Wilson ran unsuccessfully to replace retiring New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman last year. | AP Photo

A company run by former Rep. Heather Wilson collected about $ 450,000 from four Energy Department facilities even though there’s little evidence that the work was actually done, according to a new inspector general report.

Federal regulations require that consulting work is only paid out when supported by evidence of the nature and scope of the services provided.

Continue Reading

“In spite of these requirements, we found that the Department’s facility contractors failed to include, or did not enforce, terms in the consulting agreements that would have required [Heather Wilson and Co. LLC] to provide details regarding the nature and scope of work performed prior to payment,” DOE inspector general Gregory Friedman said. “Instead, we discovered that the contractors made payments to [the company] based on invoices that lacked the detail necessary to support that the agreed-to services had been provided.”

The little information investigators got from contractor officials at Los Alamos and other DOE labs “did not meet even minimum standards for satisfying” Federal Acquisition Regulation requirements, Friedman said.

The questionable payments include 23 payments from Sandia between January 2009 and March 2011, totaling $ 226,378; 19 payments from Los Alamos between August 2009 and February 2011, totaling $ 195,718; and $ 30,000 made by the Nevada National Security Site and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Wilson ran unsuccessfully against Martin Heinrich to replace retiring New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman last year and was appointed to the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise by House Speaker John Boehner.

DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration requested the IG’s review and DOE says it has already recovered $ 442,877 paid to Wilson’s firm.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

DOE IG flags $450K to ex-Rep. Wilson"s firm