The CBI probe into the 2G spectrum scandal received a shot in the arm with the arrival of a voluminous set of documents from Mauritius on the ownership pattern and money trails of around 15 companies under the scanner.
Officials said that the documents were received by the agency two days ago through diplomatic channels and were currently under scrutiny. In all, five packets of documents have been received following an order passed by the island nation's Attorney General that all information sought by the CBI in their Letter Rogatories (LRs) should be responded to.
Sources said that while the scrutiny of the documents is still in progress what is known is that the money trail for Delphi Investment — the company to which the 9.9% stake held by Reliance Telecom in Swan was transferred in December 2007 — has now moved to Switzerland. Details and the funding pattern of Mavi Investment Fund, the company of which Delphi is a wholly-owned subsidiary, have also been received by the CBI.
The fact that the money trail of Delphi had moved to another country, agency officials said, was "predictable" and said that a decision would be taken shortly about how soon a team could visit Switzerland.
The LR sent by the CBI to Mauritius had stated that just two months after bagging the dual technology licence, a subsidiary company of Reliance Communications had sold its entire equity of 1.07 crore shares to Delphi, located in Port Louis, Mauritius.
The agency plans to probe the money trail in Switzerland in its attempt to link Delphi to the alleged pay-offs and a possible quid pro quo involving former Telecom Minister A Raja.
The documents from Mauritius have been received by the CBI days before the agency is set to file its status report in the 2G case to the Supreme Court (in the first week of July) and at a time when the agency is actively tying loose ends to file a third chargesheet in the case.
Given the urgency of the probe, the CBI had dispatched a two-member team to Mauritius last month which was accompanied by a two-member team of the Enforcement Directorate. The investigators had appealed to the Attorney General, citing the mutual legal assistance treaty between the two countries.
Daily deal website LivingSocial held meetings earlier this week to select bankers to lead an initial public offering, which could raise north of a billion dollars, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The offering could value the company at up to $15 billion, according to this person, a significant increase compared to a recent private transaction which valued it at $3 billion.
The Washington, DC based company, run by CEO Tim O'Shaughnessy, also expects to be cash flow positive by 2012, boosted by expected revenue of $1 billion for this year, according to this person.
LivingSocial’s race to IPO comes just weeks after rival Groupon filed registration paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO of its own.
Groupon’s offering is slated to be at least $750 million in size, and is being led by Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs.
A spokesperson for LivingSocial was not immediately available for comment.
When the Wimbledon tennis championships got under way at the All England Club in the 1900s, refined-looking competitors wore boater hats, long sleeves, neatly pressed trousers and floor length dressers.
While it remains the most traditional tournament, as the only grand slam requiring players to wear white, the outfits on display at Wimbledon have become a little more outlandish.
Five-times champion Venus Williams raised eyebrows when she took to the court for her first round match in an all-in-one lace outfit, featuring a zip up the front and a cut-out back which the American deemed "a peek-a-boo."
"It's just kind of like a trendy dress, it's a jumper, jumpers are very now, as is lace," she said of her creation, which appeared to put the quest for style before practicality.
"The shoulders have a lot of draping, which is also in at the moment, it's fun. I'm really into zippers, so it has like a focal point of a zipper in the front."
While Wimbledon's organizers are not oblivious to fashion, choosing Polo Ralph Lauren to design outfits for its umpires, line judges, ball boys and girls, elegance is the order of the day with court officials dressed in clean-cut navy blazers, cream trousers and flat caps.
Defending champion Serena Williams favored this more reserved approach when picking her outfit for this year's tournament, despite accessorizing with big jewelry and long glittery purple nails.
"The inspiration was to be classic. So I kind of took classic lines and brought it to tennis with a cardigan as well as the dress," she told reporters.
"It reminded me of something you would have seen in like the '60s. I love it. It's so feminine. It's almost like a little baby doll. I really think it's cute."
Wimbledon's decree on clothing color is a relatively recent one, introduced in 1963 when it decided that except for a cardigan, pullover or headwear, competitors must be dressed "predominantly in white," updated in 1995 to "almost entirely white."
In a nod to this classic tennis look, Kate Middleton donned a layered white knee-length Alice Temperley dress for her appearance in the Royal Box with husband Prince William, an outfit which would have looked less out of place on court than that of self-proclaimed Lady Gaga of tennis, Bethanie Mattek-Sands.
With menacing black face paint daubed under her eyes, Mattek-Sands arrived for her match in a fringed biker jacket adorned with white tennis balls, teemed with knee-high socks and a one-sleeved dress.
The jacket, a collaboration with British designer Alex Noble who has also worked with Gaga, ensured the number 30 seed made her mark on the tournament despite crashing out in the first round.
While less daring, the men's game is not without its own fashionistas. Style conscious six-times champion Roger Federer regularly sports clothing and a racket bag embellished with his own gold "RF" insignia.
But players who try to push the boundaries too far risk putting style before sport.
"Any competitor who appears on court dressed in a manner deemed unsuitable by the committee will be liable to be defaulted," the club states in its rules.
Pope Benedict XVI has tweeted for the first time, announcing the launch of a Vatican news information portal.
Benedict's tweet on Tuesday read: "Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI"
Vatican officials said the Benedict touched on a touchpad to send the tweet.
The portal www.news.va was launched for the feast day of St. Peter and Paul, which falls on June 29 but officially begins with a vesper service June 28.
Wednesday also marks the 60th anniversary of Benedict's ordination as a priest.
The portal for the first time aggregates information from the Vatican's various print, online, radio and television media.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Microsoft has officially launched its Web-based email and Office services, part of its ongoing effort to keep Google at bay when it comes to business software.
"Office 365" has been available in a test version since last year. It combines Web-based versions of Word, Excel and other Office applications. It also includes the Exchange e-mail system, SharePoint online collaboration technology and Microsoft's instant messaging, Internet phone and video conferencing system.
Google Inc. has its own set of office software that's based in the "cloud," that is, hosted on remote servers and accessed online instead of on users' desktop computers.
Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it plans to charge $2 to $27 per month for Office 365 depending on what's included. Google Apps costs $4 or $5 per month.
News Corp. is aiming to sell struggling social network site MySpace this week after three years of massive losses, according to a person familiar with the matter. The move will likely result in the layoff of more than half of the site's remaining 500 workers.
It's a jarring goodbye for a once-hot Internet property, which News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch predicted four years ago would eventually make $1 billion in annual revenue. MySpace never reached that goal. This year, MySpace is expected to make less than a fifth of that as ad sales plummet, according to research firm eMarketer.
MySpace's crash coincided with Facebook's rise — due in large part to its cleaner interface, smoother operation and better integration with other services. MySpace was generally clunky, slower and littered with display ads. It was also slower to adapt.
At least three bidders are still in the running for MySpace — online advertising network operator Specific Media, private equity fund Golden Gate Capital and Austin Ventures, an investment fund that is working with MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe. The company hasn't chosen a buyer yet, according to the person, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
News Corp. is looking to cut a deal Wednesday or Thursday in order to have it completed in its fiscal year, which ends Thursday.
Earlier, the News Corp.-owned website All Things D reported that MySpace was on the verge of being sold for $20 million to $30 million. The person said the deal price will likely be much higher and include a combination of cash and stock.
Any sale around that price would mark a stunning reversal from 2005, when News Corp. bought the promising startup for $580 million when social networking was in its infancy.
Facebook has turned into the dominant social media platform with more than half a billion users. A recent investment by private fund GSV Capital Corp. valued Facebook at $50 billion. LinkedIn Corp., a social network for professionals, recently went public and now has a market capitalization of about $8 billion.
The low estimate for MySpace suggests there may only be residual value in its brand, technology and declining visitor base, said Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst with research firm eMarketer.
"It shows that this is just something that News Corp. wants to get off of its books at any price it can get," she said.
MySpace unveiled an extensive overhaul in October in an attempt to transform itself into a hub for consuming entertainment content, but it didn't help reverse visitor declines. In January, it slashed nearly half its staff, or about 500 people, in hopes of returning to profitability.
The site still lost money. For the three months through March, the News Corp. segment that includes MySpace lost $165 million. That was worse than the $150 million loss it posted a year earlier, mainly because of lower advertising revenue at the site. That marked the 11th straight quarterly loss since mid-2008, over which time the segment lost about $1.4 billion cumulatively.
MySpace CEO Mike Jones is the last remnant of a three-person executive team that came in to fix the site in April 2009. It is unclear if Jones will stay on after a sale.
According to tracking firm comScore Inc., MySpace had 74 million visitors from around the world in May, down 32 percent from a year earlier. By comparison, Facebook had 1.1 billion, up 26 percent; Twitter had 139 million, up 54 percent; and LinkedIn had 86 million.
News Corp. shares rose 25 cents, or 1.5 percent, to close Tuesday at $17.17.
Google Inc, frustrated by a string of failed attempts to crack social networking, is taking another stab at fending off Facebook and other hot social sites with a new service called Google Plus.
Google designed the service, unveiled on Tuesday, to tie together all of its online properties, laying the foundation for a full-fledged social network. It is the company's biggest foray into social networking since co-founder Larry Page took over as chief executive in April.
Page has made social networking a top priority at the world's No 1 Internet search engine, whose position as the main gateway to online information could be at risk as people spend more time on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
To set its service apart from Facebook, which has more than 500 million users, Google is betting on what it says is a better approach to privacy, a hot-button issue that has burned Facebook, as well as Google, in the past.
Central to Google Plus are so-called "circles" of friends and acquaintances. Users can organize contacts into different customized circles -- family members, co-workers or college friends, say -- and share photos, videos or other information only within those smaller groups.
"In the online world there's this 'share box' and you type into it and you have no idea who is going to get that, or where it's going to land, or how it's going to embarrass you six months from now," said Google Vice President of Product Management Bradley Horowitz.
"For us, privacy isn't buried six panels deep," he added.
Facebook, which has been criticized for confusing privacy controls, introduced a feature last year that lets users create smaller groups of friends. Google, without mentioning Facebook by name, said other social networking services' attempts to create groups were "bolt-on" efforts that do not work as well.
Google Plus will be rolled out to a limited number of users in what the company is calling a field trial. Only those invited to join will initially be able to use the service. Google did not say when it would be more widely available.
Learning frrom the Buzz
Google's stock has been pressured by concerns about rising spending within the company and increasing regulatory scrutiny -- not to mention its struggles with social networking. The US Federal Trade Commission, among others, is currently reviewing its business practices.
Its shares are down almost 20% this year after underperforming the market in 2010.
To create Google Plus, the company went back to the drawing board in the wake of several notable failures, including Google Wave and Google Buzz, a microblogging service whose launch was marred by privacy snafus.
"We learned a lot in Buzz, and one of the things we learned is that there's a real market opportunity for a product that addresses people's concerns around privacy and how their information is shared," said Horowitz.
Google, with USD 29 billion in revenue last year, drew more than 1 billion visitors worldwide to its websites in May, more than any other company, according to Web analytics firm comScore. But people are spending more time on Facebook: The average U.S. visitor spent 375 minutes on Facebook in May, compared with 231 minutes for Google.
Google Plus seems designed to make its online properties a pervasive part of the daily online experience, rather than being spots where Web surfers occasionally check in to search for a website or check email.
As with Facebook's service, Google Plus has a central Web page that displays an ever-updating stream of the comments, photos and links being shared by friends and contacts.
A toolbar across the top of most of Google's sites -- such as its main search page, its Gmail site and its Maps site - allows users to access their personalized data feed. They can then contribute their own information to the stream.
Google Plus will also offer a special video chat feature, in which up to 10 people can jump on a conference call. And Google will automatically store photos taken on cell phones on its Internet servers, allowing a Google Plus user to access the photos from any computer and share them.
When asked if he expected people to switch from Facebook to Google Plus, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra said people may decide to use both.
"People today use multiple tools. I think what we're offering here offers some very distinct advantages around some basic needs," he said.
Taking a little time off this week. My daughter turned 21 (21!) and she's decided she wants me to go with her to Las Vegas. That way she doesn't have to pay for anything.
How could I say no?
We'll be driving. Gas prices are falling and airline prices are rising.
While the two of us might get a little crazy—emphasis on "little"—I can rest assured that one thing is safer in Vegas than back home in California: my car.
Hmmm, seems the Golden State is just a golden opportunity for car thieves.
The Golden State dominates the list of cities where you're most likely to have your car stolen.
The worst three cities are in the heart of California's farm country — Fresno, Modesto (backdrop for "American Graffiti"), and Bakersfield. Based on what I see driven there, F-150s and decrepit old Impalas must be hot, figuratively speaking.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau says car thefts per 100,000 residents are rising in that region, even as the number is dropping nationally. In Fresno, there were 7,559 car thefts reported in 2010, or 812 per 100,000 residents.
Out of the top 10 spots, only two are outside California—Spokane at #4 and Yakima at #10 (what's going on up in Washington apple country?)
California has the most people, has the most cars, and has the most thieves. Why so many per capita? You are nothing without a car here.
Nobody walks in LA.
I drive, therefore I am.
The Business Journal in Fresno reports that police believe car crime is up in the Central Valley because of the increased use of methamphetamine (users need cash) and the desire for car parts needed for street racing.
The Journal reports that even though the Central Valley is the worst based on per capita thievery, you can guess where to largest number of actual thefts occur. "They lose as many cars in the half time at a Lakers game in Los Angeles as they do in Modesto," says Frank Scafidi of the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
So if I'm playing the odds, which I will this week, I'm safer out of state.
Las Vegas is way down at #17 on the list.
I'll still lock the car.
Here is the list:
Fresno, Calif.
Modesto, Calif.
Bakersfield-Delano, Calif.
Spokane, Wash.
Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif.
Sacramento, Calif. area
Stockton, Calif.
Visalia-Porterville, Calif.
San Francisco-Oakland, Calif. area
Yakima, Wash.
Laredo, Texas
Detroit, Mich. area
Seattle, Wash. area
Macon, Georgia
San Diego, Calif. area
Myrtle Beach, SC area
Las Vegas, Nev.
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.
Jackson, Miss.
Albuquerque, NM
Source: NICB
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