Toy Recall

One of the considerations in manufacturing toys is that there should be no components
that could choke or pose safety hazards for the children.

Washington Post has this news today Sept. 23, 2006.

Hasbro Inc. yesterday recalled about 255,000 Playskool toy tool benches after a toddler in West Virginia and another in Texas died from choking on the set's oversize plastic nails.

The nails are part of the Team Talkin' Tool Bench, a set that comes with a toy hammer, screwdriver, two 2¼-inch plastic screws and two 3-inch plastic nails.

Hasbro agreed to conduct the recall voluntarily after notifying the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

A commission statement said the two young children died after the plastic nails became "forcefully lodged in their throats."

The workbench was sold nationwide at stores including Toys R Us, Wal-Mart, Target and KB Toys from October 2005 through September 2006 for about $35.

Consumers with the workbench should keep the toy nails away from children and can contact Hasbro to exchange the nails for a $50 certificate for another Hasbro product.

"The toy without the nails does not present a hazard," Consumer Product Safety Commission spokeswoman Julie Vallese said. "Parents don't have to take the entire toy away, they just have to remove the nails."

The first victim, a 19-month-old boy from Martinsburg, W.Va., died in January. Hasbro learned of the death in February after an employee saw a reference to it on Amazon.com during a routine check of online comments about Hasbro products, spokesman Wayne S. Charness said.

A message left with an attorney for the family of the Martinsburg boy was not returned.

Hasbro asked the Consumer Product Safety Commission to investigate. The agency concluded that the oversize plastic nail met federal regulations for small parts and that the company had complied with federal labeling standards. The toy was marketed for use by children age 3 and older.

The second victim, a 2-year-old in League City, Tex., died in July after running and falling on one of the plastic nails, said Michael Howell, an attorney for the family.

Howell said that the family reported the death to the commission a week after it happened, but that the agency did not interview family members until this week.

When asked why the agency did not investigate the case earlier, Vallese said the investigation took place "in a timely manner from when we learned about it."

Hasbro, of Pawtucket, R.I., learned of the death Sept. 15, after the family filed a lawsuit against the company in Galveston, Tex. Hasbro, in turn, notified the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is still investigating the case, Vallese said.

Deaths caused by toys "are very rare," said Alan Korn, director of public policy for the nonprofit group National Safe Kids.

"For the most part, toys in this country are wildly safe, so when there's been a death with a toy involving choking and then a second death, it should be a concern to parents, the government and the company," he said. "Just because a toy is compliant with federal regulations does not mean it is necessarily safe for the marketplace."

Don Mays, senior director for product safety at Consumer Reports magazine, said federal product safety officials should reconsider how they determine when a small part is a choking hazard.

Parts that are small enough to cause such harm are tested to see if they fit inside a cylinder with a 1.25-inch diameter when tested. If they fit and they are intended for use by children younger than 3, they are banned.

"That is a screening tool but not a panacea for catching choking hazards," Mays said.

Mays believes the cylinder used for testing should be larger. Consumer Reports recommends that parents do their own test, using a tube from a roll of toilet paper.

Mays also questioned the target age group for the Team Talkin' Tool Bench. "Clearly this is a toy that is attractive to a child under three," he said.

As with most recalls, major retailers have begun pulling the toy from store shelves.

Hasbro's recall hotline is 800-509-9554.

Is Bin Laden dead?

People are shocked. Is it true or not?

News from BBC.


President Jacques Chirac has ordered an inquiry into the leak of a French secret service memo claiming that Osama Bin Laden had died.

Mr Chirac told reporters he was surprised the memo had been leaked, and refused to comment on the claim itself.

A French newspaper quoted a document as saying the Saudi secret services were convinced the al-Qaeda leader had died of typhoid in Pakistan in late August.

Officials in Pakistan and the US said they could not confirm the account.

Saudi-born Bin Laden was based in Afghanistan until the Taleban government there was overthrown by US-backed forces in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.

Since then, US and Pakistani officials have regularly said they believe he is hiding in the lawless border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

His last videotaped message was released in late 2004, but several audio tapes have been released this year - the last at the end of June, in which Bin Laden praised Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in an American air strike.

Internal organs paralysed

In its report, French regional daily L'Est Republicain said it had obtained a copy of a DGSE foreign intelligence service report dated 21 September.

"According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama Bin Laden is dead," it read.

"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al-Qaeda fell victim, while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, to a very serious case of typhoid that led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs."

Mr Chirac said: "I am surprised that a confidential memo from the secret services has been published, therefore I've ordered the defence minister to start an inquiry.

"As far as the information itself is concerned, it's not confirmed in any way. Therefore I have no comment at all."

The Washington-based IntelCenter, which monitors terrorism communications, said it was not aware of any similar reports on the internet.

"We've seen nothing from any al-Qaeda messaging or other indicators that would point to the death of Osama Bin Laden," director Ben Venzke told the Associated Press news agency.

First Penis Transplant Reversed

This could have been a solution to problem of penile erection for old men but it seems there is still a need for psychological preparation for the spouses.

Read the news.

Surgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife.

Dr Weilie Hu and surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital in China performed the complex 15-hour surgery on a 44-year-old man whose penis had been damaged in a traumatic accident.

The microsurgery to attach the penis, which had been donated by the parents of a 22-year-old brain-dead man, was successful but Dr Hu and his team removed it two weeks later.

"Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," Dr Hu said in a report published online by the peer-reviewed journal European Urology, without elaborating.

"This is the first reported case of penile transplantation in a human."

Both the man and his wife had requested the surgery.

He had been unable to have intercourse or urinate properly since the accident that occurred eight months before the surgery was performed.

Ten days after the operation, which had been approved by the hospital's medical ethical committee, the recipient had been able to urinate.

There had been no signs of the 10-centimetre organ being rejected by the recipient's body.

But Dr Hu said more cases and longer observation are needed to determine whether sexual sensation and function can be restored.

"The patient finally decided to give up the treatment because of the wife's psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis" Dr Hu said.

In a commentary in the journal, Yoram Vardi, of the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa in Israel, said the successful surgery represents an additional step in contemporary medicine.

But he added that careful patient selection is required as well as thorough informed consent of the patient and his family.

"Satisfactory consideration of these issues must be taken into account so that this approach can be considered a serious therapeutic option in the future," he said.

- Reuters

Search for Fountain of Youth Continues

This news from San Francisco Chronicle shows that the quest for Eternal youth continues.


Entrepreneur backs research on anti-aging
Scientist says humans could live indefinitely
- Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Monday, September 18, 2006



A controversial scientist who hopes to help humans live for thousands of years has received a multimillion-dollar grant from a Bay Area entrepreneur.

Peter A. Thiel, co-founder and former chief executive officer of the online payments system PayPal, announced Saturday he is pledging $3.5 million "to support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging."

The recipient will be the Methuselah Foundation, a Springfield, Va., nonprofit started and run by the most colorful scientist in aging research: Aubrey de Grey, a 43-year-old English researcher who says he hopes to "radically postpone aging, giving indefinite life spans."

In short, de Grey's thesis is that there are seven main causes of aging, and that if those can be licked, then people could live indefinitely.

Among aging experts, de Grey's reputation is so widely contested that a headline over an article last year in an MIT-based publication, Technology Review, asked: "He's brilliant, but is he nuts?" In a tongue-in-cheek letter to the magazine in response to the story, top authority on aging Richard Miller, of the University of Michigan, wrote that he would like de Grey to help him solve a similarly complex technological problem: how to make pigs fly.

De Grey told The Chronicle in e-mails and phone conversations last week that he isn't disturbed by scientific critics. Some of them, he noted, argue that death is inevitable because the cells and genes of living organisms inevitably accumulate errors that eventually kill them. But, he pointed out, because of careful upkeep "we have vintage cars driving around that were designed to last 15 years -- and they're 100 years old."

So why should humans be any different?

De Grey, who received a doctorate in biology at Cambridge University in 2000 and worked in the university's genetics department from 1992 until a few months ago, characterized the $3.5 million grant as a "major breakthrough" in his effort to get research on indefinite extension of life span "really moving in the laboratory."

"It's "pump-priming," he said. "I need probably $1 billion over 10 years" to achieve that goal."

Advocates of indefinite life extension seem to hope the future will resemble the film "Boynton Beach Club," in which white-haired, super-fit senior citizens party, play and have busy sex lives that would shame a college fraternity. But critics of de Grey-style longevity research fear that if everyone lived indefinitely, Earth would become miserably packed with old, sick people, and nursing homes would be more ubiquitous than Starbucks.

De Grey is confident that humanity will figure out a solution to the crowding dilemma. One possibility: "Maybe people of the future will decide that children are not much fun anyway and will reduce the birth rate," he said.

Experts on aging tended to have a strong personal liking for de Grey, and said he had stimulated some interesting thinking in aging research, but believe that in recent years, he has become sensationalistic in his public comments.

"Many of my colleagues are extremely critical of him -- they believe he's a pseudoscientist, that he is out for publicity -- and that he has no redeeming features," said Judith Campisi, a cell and molecular biologist who has joint appointments at the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"I must say I don't agree with that," added Campisi. "I do think he started out sincerely hoping to stimulate interesting research. And I think in his small way he did get people to think. ... But where he seems to have lost his way is he doesn't listen to rational argument anymore."

S. Jay Olshansky, a demographer at the University of Illinois who confronted de Grey on CBS' "60 Minutes" earlier this year, added: "Where I have vehemently disagreed with Aubrey is where he tries to convince people, especially reporters, that we are on the verge of immortality -- that we have people alive today who will live for 1,000 or for 5,000 years."

At present, scientists don't even know what causes aging, but "Aubrey seems to think that he does -- that there are seven (causes for aging), that we have to reengineer the body to eliminate them, and that we'll live forever.

"In the world of science," Olshansky said, "you don't make declarative statements (like that) without evidence to support them."

No. 1 on de Grey's list of seven causes of aging is to focus on the atrophy or degeneration of cells. Others include gene mutations, mutations to the energy-generating mitochondria inside cells, and the unhealthy accumulation of "junk" inside and outside cells such as the amyloid proteins found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

In response to Olshansky's criticism, de Grey told The Chronicle by e-mail that "I have published a lot of papers that provide the scientific basis for my optimism."

Thiel could not be reached for comment.

Heartbreak heaven for staff

I just wrote about how to mend a broken heart and among those recommendations is taking a leave. In Japan, they call it shitsuren kyuka.

By YOKO HANI

Staff writer

It's 9 o'clock on a Monday morning. A phone rings in an office and the boss picks it up. At the other end she hears the fragile voice of one of her staff telling her she broke up with her boyfriend the day before. "I would like to take a shitsuren kyuka," the staffer says. Unperturbed, the boss replies: "No problem. Take care of yourself." And with that the conversation ends.
* * * * *

That phone conversation is likely to occur in the future in the Tokyo office of Miki Hiradate's market-research company Hime & Company. By asking for a shitsuren kyuka, the staffer would be requesting "compassionate leave to fix a broken heart" -- and its granting would be the norm.

News photo
Miki Hiradate in the Tokyo salon of her market-research firm Hime & Company, whose all-female staff she treats in considerate ways that most women workers in Japan could only dream of.

"Unless you are extremely lucky," says Hiradate, the firm's 37-year-old founder and president, "you will definitely have the experience in your 20s and 30s of being brokenhearted after someone leaves you.

"So, shitsuren kyuka is a [paid] holiday you take when that happens and you feel too devastated to come to the office. I introduced it after I asked young women what they wanted from 'female-friendly companies,' and they suggested these holidays."

Of course, a female-friendly workplace would offer flexible working hours and child-care leave to help women balance their lives as both mothers and workers. But Hiradate wanted something more, and when she heard the suggestion for "heartbreak leave," she went for it at once.

"Some people may just call their office and say they're taking a day off because they don't feel well, but in my company the employees can openly say they are taking a shitsuren kyuka. They are not asked anything more.

"You know, when you are brokenhearted, you feel terrible and have red eyes and the condition affects your work performance. I recommend them to come to the office after taking some rest. That's good for the company, too," Hiradate says in an upbeat tone.

As for how much rest a lovelorn lady might be allowed, Hiradate believes that the damage done by breaking up gets more serious the older you become. Consequently, her company grants one day a year off to staff in their early 20s, two days off to those in their late 20s and three days off to thirtysomethings.

Sounds nice. How many staff have actually taken the holidays since the company introduced them last year?

"Fortunately, nobody has," Hiradate says. But she swears that she herself will take her shitsuren kyuka if the need arises. "Of course, I will take three days off!" she says.

In fact, in the way it reflects women's real needs, Hiradate's shitsuren kyuka policy also aptly symbolizes the character of her business, which hinges on reflecting the women's market.

Hiradate started her Hime Club (meaning Princess Club) market-research business mainly targeting women in their 20s and 30s in 2002, then renamed it Hime & Company. The business has grown steadily while attracting such clients as cosmetics and beverage makers who create and sell products tailored to that age group.

Hiradate currently employs four full-time staff, all women, who organize and conduct market research on a pool of about 4,000 women who signed up to her "focus groups" mainly through her Web site at www.himeclub.com . She calls those women her hime (princesses) because the purpose of her business is ultimately to promote products and services that make them and their contemporaries happy, she says.

The decor in the salon of her Aoyama office is deliberately girlish, with a white fluffy carpet and pink artificial flowers twined around the spiral stairs up to her office -- as it is there that her hime often come to evaluate new drinks, cosmetics and other products.

"One day, I would like to create a big, castle-shaped department store which sells items selected by hime," she says, smiling, in the rosy room.

But to push forward to achieve her grand design, Hiradate freely admits that she relies on having the right kind of staff coming up with unique ideas.

"I started shitsuren kyuka also because I wanted to have staff who are freed from stereotype and who understand humor. I needed people who would say: 'Shitsuren kyuka? Cool. Can I take that if I get brokenhearted when it's revealed that my favorite pop star has got a girlfriend?"

As unusual as her "heartbreak holidays" may be, Hiradate says she is not just "trying to challenge stereotypes." Rather, she seems to enjoy the reactions to what she is doing.

"When we started the business under the name Hime Club, it probably sounded like a hostess club in Ginza. People in PR companies, for example, had to explain to their client companies that we were actually a marketing company. However, the impact of the name was far stronger than the usual names of marketing businesses, such as 'AA Research' or 'Woman Something.' So that way our business became widely known in the industry.

"I did that on purpose. I try to create something that people cannot help chatting about."

Hiradate's stream of new strategies seems to never stop. Another new holiday at her company is bagen hankyu (a half-day off to go to the sales) -- an idea that came from her experience of working in a big company.

"You can't miss the seasonal discount sales, especially the morning of the day when they start. Of course you can take a half day off in any company, but in a big company employees tend to do that secretly and often keep their booty in the company locker.

"But in my opinion, shopping in the sales is exciting and also fun, because you can show off your bargains and share your excitement and happiness later. It's nonsense to hide them away."

The system benefits the company, too, Hiradate says. "My company is a venture business, and I can't pay much to my employees. But if they can buy their clothes at half-price utilizing the holidays, that may help."

So what's next?

"I will try and do anything -- as long as it's legal -- to help make my staff happy," Hiradate says with a broad smile and a twinkle in her eye that suggests she already has something else in mind.

Toilet College in Japan

This is not a news but an article written by Amy Chavez, entitled
Commode confession of Sound Princess



While this may be true for Japan nowadays, just a decade ago, Japan had such a reputation for filthy toilets, there was an entire page on the Internet dedicated to the location of the dirtiest toilets in Japan. Then toilet manufacturing giants such as Toto started flaunting their toilet technology in public areas. I remember walking into a public toilet five years ago and being so in awe of the cleanliness and gadgetry, I thought: "Whoa! Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!" No, urine Japan, and ready to meet a different kind of Wiz.

Most public toilets nowadays offer deluxe Western-style toilets that feature bottom washers, bottom dryers and heated seats. Some public bathrooms even have odor-decomposing walls.

While wee in the United States would never imagine outfitting even our home bathrooms with such luxurious thrones, half the households in Japan pay the princely sum of $ 3,000 for one. Those privy to the wonders of modern toilet technology can then empress their friends with remote-control toilet seats that play music and open and close on command. For the first time, at weekly bridge parties, everyone will have an equal chance at a royal flush. Some toilet seats even measure your body fat ratio with electrodes, and others glow in the dark. In short, Japanese toilet companies are out to make sure that no man will yearn the urinal. For the new, modern whiz kid.

Japan, proud of its toilet technology, has even started a toilet college and has sent experts to Singapore to teach bathroom attendants how to properly clean toilets in public restrooms.

I suppose it would not be fair for me to criticize, from my humble commode, one of Japan's original pit-style toilets, which makes sounds so atrocious that no Oto Hime could ever cover them up. Over the years, this toilet has provided many a child with stories of the toilet monster and many an adult with night soil to fertilize gardens with. There's no need to worry you may smell up the bathroom or forget to flush. And the toilet seat doesn't sing, so you have to do the singing yourself.

As I sit on my throne right now, singing, I can finally feel the royal connection. I have become my own Sound Princess.

Japan's centenarians are increasing in number

This news intrigued me a lot as to the lifestyle of the Japanese which contributes to their longevity.

From Associated Press/Yahoo News


By CHISAKI WATANABE, Associated Press WriterSat Sep 16, 12:34 PM ET

The number of Japanese living beyond 100 has almost quadrupled in the past 10 years, with the once-exclusive centenarian club expected to surpass 28,000 this year, the government said Friday.

The Health Ministry said Japan was likely to have 28,395 citizens aged 100 years or older at the end of September, a jump from last year's record 25,554 — of which women comprised 85 percent. The ministry conducted a nationwide survey and the figure is a projection of centenarians by the end of the month.

The number of people living older than 100 has been on the rise since 1971, and has accelerated since 1996 when Japan had 7,373 people who had reached three figures, according to the ministry.

The rapid increase underscores both positive and negative sides of the country's aging population.

While experts say that there are more active centenarians than before, the rapidly graying population adds to concerns over Japan's overburdened public pension system.

Its centenarian population is expected to reach nearly 1 million — the world's largest — by 2050, according to U.N. projections.

Yone Minagawa is the oldest woman at 113 in the southern Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka, while the oldest man at 110 is Tomoji Tanabe in another southern prefecture, Miyazaki, the ministry said.

Tanabe drinks milk and keeps a diary every day, saying that the key to long life is not to drink alcohol, the ministry said.

Tokyo has the most centenarians with 2,562. Okinawa, Japan's southernmost chain of islands, has the highest concentration, with 740 centenarians, or 54 for every 100,000 people, well above a nationwide average of 22 per 100,000.

The ratio for the United States was about 18 in 100,000, according to the 2000 census.

The announcement was made prior to Respect for the Aged Day on Sept. 18, a national holiday honoring the country's elderly, when the government gives each new centenarian a letter from the prime minister and a silver cup.

Web Surfing in Public Places is not Safe

If you are a business traveler think twice before using the wirless network at the airport.

Web Surfing in Public Places Is a Way to Court Trouble
By SUSAN STELLIN

Any business traveler who has logged on to a wireless network at the airport, printed a document at a hotel business center or checked e-mail messages at a public terminal has probably wondered, at least fleetingly, “Is this safe?”

Although obsessing about computer security is a bit like worrying about a toddler — potential hazards lurk everywhere and you can drive yourself crazy trying to avoid them — the fact is, business travelers take certain risks with the things they do on most trips.

“If you go into the average hotel and sit down in the business center and have a look at their computer, I’m sure you’ll find some interesting things that people shouldn’t have left behind,” said Paul Stamp, a security analyst with Forrester Research.

“The first step companies need to do is to educate people about how valuable the data is and also how small the circles are in which they travel,” he said, noting how loudly many people discuss business on cellphones, without a thought for who may be nearby.

Or what may be in the air. Robert Vamosi, a senior editor with the online technology publisher CNET, said wireless networks at airports — or for that matter, hotels or cafes — are not as secure as most people think.

“Someone may have some software on their computer that allows them to look at all the wireless transactions going on around them and capture packets that are floating between the laptop and the wireless access point,” he said.

These software programs are called packet sniffers and many can be downloaded free online. They are typically set up to capture passwords, credit card numbers and bank account information — which is why Mr. Vamosi says shopping on the Web is not a great way to kill time during a flight delay.

“Where I’d draw the line is putting in your bank account information or credit card number,” he said, adding that checking e-mail messages probably is not that risky, but if you want to be cautious, change your password once you are on a secure connection again.

That said, if you gain access to your corporate network through a V.P.N., or virtual private network, you are safer using public hot spots, because your data is encrypted as it travels between Gate 17 and your office’s server, where it is decoded before going to its destination.

In other words, your communications are automatically encoded by software on your computer so the data looks like gibberish to anyone trying to intercept it. If your company does not offer a V.P.N. for employees working away from the office, there are services you can subscribe to for about $10 a month that do the same thing.

Michael Sellitto, a graduate student studying international security at Harvard, said that even though he encrypted any sensitive data on his laptop, he planned to sign up for a service like HotSpotVPN to add another level of security when he is traveling, especially when using poorly protected networks at cafes and hotels.

“The problem is, the really good people have written sniffer programs so that the less-sophisticated people have access to the same technology,” Mr. Sellitto said. “Say a Microsoft Word document gets transmitted. The sniffer program will collect that and someone could open it up on their computer.”

While it is hard to say how likely it is that someone is lurking on a public network, many public networks do not have adequate security.

Last fall, InfoWorld magazine published an article about a security researcher who managed to collect more than 100 passwords, per stay, at hotels with lax security (about half the hotels she tested).

Gathering reliable statistics about security breaches is notoriously difficult, since companies are reluctant to reveal this information. Still, the most recent computer crime and security survey, conducted annually by the Computer Security Institute with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, found that the average loss from computer security incidents in 2005 was $167,713 per respondent (based on 313 companies and organizations that answered the question).

As Jim Louderback, editor of PC Magazine, noted, the statistics may not matter given the problems one data breach can cause.

“Even if it’s 1 or 2 percent,” he said. “You don’t want to run that risk.”

Using a public computer can also mean courting trouble, because data viewed while surfing the Web, printing a document or opening an e-mail attachment is generally stored on the computer — meaning it could be accessible to the next person who sits down. (To remove traces of your work, delete any documents you have viewed, clear the browser cache and the history file and empty the trash before you walk away.)

“You also run the risk that somebody has loaded a program on there that can capture your log-ins and passwords,” Mr. Louderback said, recalling an incident a few years ago when a Queens resident was caught installing this type of “key logger” software on computers at several Kinko’s locations in New York.

One way to foil these programs, which record what you type and can send the transcript to a hacker, is to use a password manager like RoboForm. This $30 software encrypts all your user names and passwords for various Web sites, then enters the data at the click of a mouse when you are prompted to log in.

There is a mobile version that can be stored on a flash drive that plugs into a U.S.B. port — making your passwords secure and portable.

There are also simple measures you can take to protect your hardware, like using a cable lock to secure your laptop in a hotel room or even a cafe (in case you leave the table for any reason), and making sure you lock your computer bag in the trunk rather than leaving it on the back seat.

For travelers who do carry around sensitive data, it is worth looking into programs like Absolute Software’s LoJack for Laptops, which can help recover a missing computer. The software reports its location when connected to the Internet — and some versions can even be programmed to destroy data if a computer is reported lost or stolen.

But perhaps the most common snoop that business travelers encounter is someone nearby “shoulder surfing” to see what is on a laptop, out of curiosity or mere boredom.

To foil prying eyes, 3M sells a Notebook Privacy Filter, a plastic film that makes it impossible to view a laptop screen from an angle.

Trevor Stromquist, a sales analyst for a manufacturing company in Minneapolis, has been using one for the last two years to dissuade nosy neighbors on the road, but he has noticed an added benefit back at the office.

Web surfing,laptop,business,IsulongSEOPH

Stock Option Dating is the culprit

Backdating stock options is the financial scandal that has been rocking the TECHNOLOGY firms. The practice already has led to criminal charges against the former chief executives of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and Comverse Technology Inc.
Backdating is not illegal per se but the proper disclosures are required to inform the investors when stock options were awarded.

Two techonology firms, Apple and E Plus are restating their financial statements because of the stock options-related accounting practices.

Excerpt of the news:


EPlus Finds Problems in Stock Option Accounting
Herndon Firm Is Latest Affected


EPlus Inc., a maker of business software in Herndon, announced yesterday that it would restate its financial results for the past two years because of "incorrect accounting" for stock option awards, as disclosures mounted about questionable compensation practices.

The company said it had uncovered problems with options granted to four senior officers -- chief executive Phillip G. Norton, Executive Vice President Bruce M. Bowen, Treasurer Kleyton L. Parkhurst and Chief Financial Officer Steven J. Mencarini -- after a stockholder flagged the issue with a letter to management in late June.

The audit committee at ePlus expanded its review to cover every stock option awarded since the company's initial public offering a decade ago. The review, which is not yet complete, has found that the "actual measurement dates" for options doled out between 1998 and 2005 "differ from the recorded measurement dates," according to a news release issued yesterday.

In a preliminary estimate, the company predicted that it would record $3 million in compensation expenses because of the problem, not including undisclosed but "significant" costs of the ongoing investigation and of revamping its "inadequate" financial controls. An ePlus spokesman declined to comment yesterday beyond the news release.

The ePlus announcement came the same day that Apple Computer Inc. said it would miss a deadline for filing its quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission because of a continuing review of "irregularities" related to past stock option awards. Apple said it received a letter from the Nasdaq Stock Market formally warning that its failure to file a timely quarterly report with the SEC put the company's shares at risk for possible delistment. Apple said it would request a hearing before Nasdaq's listing panel and that its shares would keep trading on the market pending the panel's decision.

Read the entire story here.

technology,stock options,Apple,Nasdaq,stock market

Martha Stewart paid the last cost of her long battle

The lie that costed Martha Stewart several millions in punitive damages and loss in the price per share of her publicly traded stocks is about to be buried and forgotten with the final settlement of the civil suit.


Excerpt of the news:

Martha Stewart agreed to pay $195,000 to settle civil insider-trading claims yesterday, marking the end of a long and costly legal battle that sent her to prison only to reemerge as a celebrity on television and in her namesake magazine.

The settlement, which requires court approval, resolves civil charges against Stewart stemming from her December 2001 sale of stock in ImClone Systems Inc. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers argued that Stewart took advantage of inside information to avoid $45,673 in losses before a negative announcement about ImClone's signature cancer drug. Two years ago, a jury convicted Stewart of lying to investigators about the sale.


Washington Post has the news about the fallen goddess of the home improvement business.
breaking-news,Washington Post ,BBC News ,Reuters,technology,business

Getting Rich on line

A new business model emerged as Google adsense becomes popular to website owners.
Take this experience of Andrew Leyden as reported in the Washington Post.
He's making $ 30,000 to $ 40,000 a year. Holy ....

Here is an excerpt of the news:

For hundreds of thousands of people, the dream of making an Internet fortune works like this: Earn pennies at a time in exchange for allowing Google Inc. or Yahoo Inc. to place advertisements on a personal or small-business Web page.

Take Andrew Leyden, former House Commerce Committee counsel and founder of a dot-com venture that failed, who started PodcastDirectory.com, a search engine for podcasts. As the site's popularity rose from a hundred hits a month in 2004 to nearly a million now, Leyden started making the equivalent of an entry-level government worker's salary -- $30,000 to $40,000 a year -- simply because people clicked on ads. That allowed him to work at home in Chesapeake Beach, Md., trying to make more money by attracting still more traffic to his site.

Read the entire news here.


breaking-news,Washington Post ,BBC News ,Reuters,technology,business

Home Prices Drop in the DC Region

Is this the start of the bubble?

Washingon Post reports:

In what may be the most telling sign yet that the real estate market here has shifted downward, median prices of homes in several parts of the Washington area have declined when compared with the same time last year.

In Loudoun County, for example, the median price of homes sold dropped 1.2 percent last month, compared with June 2005, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., the area's multiple listing service. In Fairfax County, prices fell by half a percent in May and a tenth of a percent in June. And in the District, the decrease was 0.8 percent in March and 1.2 percent in May, compared with the same months last year, even though prices in the District in June were higher than the year before. The median is the point at which half of the houses cost less and the rest more.

The declines are small, and certainly not universal. Prices continue to rise in some areas, most notably Prince George's County, where houses are still relatively inexpensive. But the drops are significant because they mark the first time in half a decade that home prices have fallen in a 12-month span, illustrating just how much the real estate landscape has changed after five years of double-digit growth in home prices.

The areas with declines have some things in common: swelling numbers of houses for sale, slowing sales and lots of new houses on the market. In Loudoun, where developers have put up acres of new subdivisions in recent years, nearly 5,000 properties are for sale via the multiple listing service, which includes mostly resale homes. That compares with 1,800 a year ago. Homes there now take an average of 75 days to sell, compared with 21 days a year ago. In the District and Fairfax County, the number of unsold homes and time on the market has also increased, boosted by a large supply of condominiums.

Read the entire story here.


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Business and Redemption

I am not talking about coupon redemption. Not even soul's redemption. This is the redemption of the tarnished image of Wal-Mart after issues about employment of non-documented aliens had put this big retail store chains in the limelight.

Here is the excerpt of the news:

A Bid to Get Religion? Wal-Mart Hires Ex-Nun
Firm Seeks to Address Critical Areas


Harsh public criticism can make any company search for redemption. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is hoping a former nun will help bring salvation.

The world's largest retailer has hired Harriet Hentges, a former nun and foreign conflict mediator, to help steer the company's policies on the environment, health care and labor relations -- three areas where Wal-Mart's public image has suffered.

Hentges, 65, this week assumed the newly created position of senior director of stakeholder engagement. She will work with nonprofit organizations, academic groups and government agencies to "lead the company's sustainability efforts," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said.

What the union says about the hiring.

Wal-Mart "must walk away from is history of inaction and publicity stunts," he said. "It must become a better company that pays a living wage, provides affordable health care and reflects the best of American values."

What the other people in the religious sector say about Wal-Mart latest corporate strategy?

Plenty of companies reach out to people of faith for guidance, said Patricia Wolf, executive director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. Wal-Mart, however, may be the first to hire someone with Hentges's background to a position of such stature, she said.

Business,Wal-Mart,social responsibility

ABANDON SHIP

As a Cerified Public Accountant, I feel bad when a big company trusted by many of its clients would go down the drain because of manipulation of its books. Do these people
understand that the partner of accounting is auditing whereby anything that is done can always be checked for its accuracy and appropriateness.

Exodus Continues at Troubled Fannie Mae
Chief Information Officer, Deputy General Counsel Are Among the Executives Planning to Leave


S

enior executives at Fannie Mae are heading for the exits two years into a $10.6 billion accounting scandal that has no end in sight.

Last week, the company announced that its chief information officer, Julie St. John, would step down at the end of the year. Deputy general counsel Renie Y. Grohl, a 12-year veteran of Fannie Mae, is leaving in September. Barry Zigas, who was senior vice president for corporate and regulatory housing goals and joined Fannie Mae in 1993, left last month.

The recent departures are part of a steady outflow of top management at the company since federal regulators first determined two years ago that the company botched its accounting.

Since the end of 2004, 44 of the top 55 executive positions at Fannie Mae have changed hands and are now occupied either by people from outside the company or by a handful of insiders who have switched jobs, spokesman Brian Faith said.

Some executives were forced out or left as part of housecleaning efforts in the aftermath of the scandal. But many, such as former senior vice president for investor relations Jayne Shontell and former senior vice president for portfolio transactions Andrew McCormick, have quit.

At least 29 senior executives, including 15 who have left Fannie Mae, are under scrutiny for their possible roles in the accounting manipulation. Some may be forced to return bonus payments based on the faulty bookkeeping, under an agreement Fannie Mae signed with federal regulators in May.

In addition to paying $400 million to settle charges of earnings manipulation with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, Fannie Mae also agreed to determine whether any of the current and former executives named in OFHEO's report on the accounting scandal should be punished or fired retroactively and forced to return money. OFHEO set a deadline of around October for the company to complete its review.

Neither Fannie Mae nor OFHEO officials would comment on whether any of the recent departures were related to the personnel review. St. John, Grohl and Zigas were not singled out in OFHEO's report or by a second inquiry led by former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) at the request of the board of directors.

The Rudman report largely blamed former chief financial officer J. Timothy Howard and former controller Leanne G. Spencer for the accounting mistakes -- allegations that both Howard and Spencer deny -- and faulted former chief executive Franklin D. Raines for fostering a culture that was obsessed with hitting earnings targets and took a fast-and-loose attitude toward accounting rules. Raines denies those charges.

St. John, in a written statement, said she was leaving because it was time for her to consider other opportunities. She will turn 55 in December, making her eligible for early retirement.

Grohl, 56, said in a telephone interview that she had long been planning to take early retirement and delayed her departure by a year out of "loyalty to the company."

Zigas did not return messages left at his home.

The committee set up by the board of directors to lead the personnel review has cleared chief executive Daniel H. Mudd and allowed him to keep his job. But it is still looking at whether to force him to repay bonus payments.

OFHEO found that Mudd attended a 2003 meeting at which earnings management appeared to have been discussed and that he didn't sufficiently look into an employee's complaints about the company's bookkeeping.

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