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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Pope Benedict bids emotional farewell

Amidst tens of thousands of supporters, Pope Benedict used his final weekly general audience to say goodbye. His resignation will become official at 8 p.m. Thursday. He will reside in the papal summer home for a couple of months before moving on to a quiet retirement in the Vatican Gardens. In the meantime, the Church's cardinals will pick a successor.?

By Tom Heneghan,?Reuters / February 27, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI waves to faithful in St.Peter's Square at the Vatican, Wednesday. He recalled moments of "joy and light" during his papacy but also times of great difficulty in an emotional, final general audience in St. Peter's Square before retiring.

AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

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Pope Benedict slips quietly from the world stage on Thursday after a private last goodbye to his cardinals and a short flight to a country palace to enter the final phase of his life "hidden from the world".

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In keeping with his shy and modest ways, there will be no public ceremony to mark the first papal resignation in six centuries and no solemn declaration ending his nearly eight-year reign at the head of the world's largest church.

His last public appearance will be a short greeting to residents and well-wishers at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence south of?Rome, in the late afternoon after his 15-minute helicopter hop from the Vatican.

When the resignation becomes official at 8 p.m.?Rome?time (02.00 p.m. EST), Benedict will be relaxing inside the 17th century palace. Swiss Guards on duty at the main gate to indicate the?pope's presence within will simply quit their posts and return to?Rome?to await their next pontiff.

Avoiding any special ceremony, Benedict used his weekly general audience on Wednesday to bid an emotional farewell to more than 150,000 people who packed?St Peter's Square?to cheer for him and wave signs of support.

With a slight smile, his often stern-looking face seemed content and relaxed as he acknowledged the loud applause from the crowd.

"Thank you, I am very moved," he said in Italian. His unusually personal remarks included an admission that "there were moments ... when the seas were rough and the wind blew against us and it seemed that the Lord was sleeping".

Cardinals prepare the future?

Once the chair of St Peter is vacant, cardinals who have assembled from around the world for Benedict's farewell will begin planning the closed-door conclave that will elect his successor.

One of the first questions facing these "princes of the Church" is when the 115 cardinal electors should enter the?Sistine Chapel?for the voting. They will hold a first meeting on Friday but a decision may not come until next week.

The Vatican seems to be aiming for an election by mid-March so the new pope?can be installed in office before Palm Sunday on March 24 and lead the Holy Week services that culminate in Easter on the following Sunday.

In the meantime, the cardinals will hold daily consultations at the Vatican at which they discuss issues facing the Church, get to know each other better and size up potential candidates for the 2,000-year-old post of pope.

There are no official candidates, no open campaigning and no clear front runner for the job. Cardinals tipped as favorites by Vatican watchers include?Brazil's Odilo Scherer, Canadian?Marc Ouellet, Ghanaian?Peter Turkson,?Italy's Angelo Scola and?Timothy Dolan?of the?United States.

Benedict's plans?

Benedict, a bookish man who did not seek the papacy and did not enjoy the global glare it brought, proved to be an energetic teacher of Catholic doctrine but a poor manager of the Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy that became mired in scandal during his reign.

He leaves his successor a top secret report on rivalries and scandals within the Curia, prompted by leaks of internal files last year that documented the problems hidden behind the Vatican's thick walls and the Church's traditional secrecy.

After about two months at Castel Gandolfo, Benedict plans to move into a refurbished convent in the Vatican Gardens, where he will live out his life in prayer and study, "hidden to the world", as he put it.

Having both a retired and a serving?pope at the same time proved such a novelty that the Vatican took nearly two weeks to decide his title and form of clerical dress.

He will be known as the "pope emeritus," wear a simple white cassock rather than his white papal clothes and retire his famous red "shoes of the fisherman," a symbol of the blood of the early Christian martyrs, for more pedestrian brown ones.

(Reporting By?Tom Heneghan; editing by Philip Pullella and Giles Elgood)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Fao4T0rLHHQ/Pope-Benedict-bids-emotional-farewell

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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Jumbo home loans are back, but far below 2007 levels

Linda Stern , Reuters ? ? ? 14 hrs.

WASHINGTON - Home sales and prices are rising briskly in those neighborhoods where the well-heeled like to plant their mailboxes: along Chicago's north shore, in the San Francisco Bay area and in the haute Hamptons.

Sales of properties worth between $750,000 and $1 million are up 38.7 percent over a year ago; $1 million-plus property sales are up 25.7 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The luxury real estate revival is being fueled, in part, by another resurgence: so-called jumbo mortgages - those loans, typically over $417,000, that are too big to qualify for purchase by federal agencies, namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Jumbo loans are returning to the mortgage market after almost disappearing entirely in the wake of the credit crisis of 2008 and the real estate meltdown. Most lenders stopped making new jumbo loans when the private secondary market dried up in the credit crunch.

Now the credit markets are comparatively stable. Lenders, who are only making these big loans to the most highly qualified borrowers, now see jumbos as a safe and profitable way to make money on their low-cost deposits. And secondary market investors are starting to regain their taste for these comparatively high-yielding loans. Moreover, once-pricey jumbo loans are being offered at interest rates that are barely higher than conventional mortgages.

"The jumbo market may fare better than the overall mortgage market in 2013," Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance said.

But he and other observers question whether the jumbo loan market can return to its past size without a full recovery in the secondary market, which is a fraction of its former self. And new mortgage regulations could limit lenders starting in 2014.

"We are definitely enthusiastic," says Tom Wind, executive vice president of residential and consumer lending at EverBank Financial Corp. in Jacksonville, Fla. He sees growing investor demand for these loans allowing the market to grow. At current rates - roughly 0.23 percentage points above conventional mortgages - they provide nice yields for banks who want to keep the loans in their portfolios, too.

For the four weeks ending Feb. 22, new jumbo activity was up 60 percent from the same period a year ago, according to Mortgage Daily, a trade publication that has been consistently reporting year-over-year increases in jumbo activity.

Even though loan volume is increasing, it is nowhere near 2007 levels, when the industry made $348 billion in jumbo loans. Last year, roughly $200 billion of jumbo mortgages were made, and Cecala says that he expects total 2013 volume to approach $220 billion.

In some expensive markets, loans don't start being classified as jumbo until they exceed $625,500; that limit was even higher for part of 2007, meaning that the 2007 figure represents a smaller potential jumbo market and isn't directly comparable.

Mortgage market leader Wells Fargo has increased its jumbo loan volume for three years straight, said Greg Gwizdz, an executive vice-president. In 2010, Wells Fargo issued a total of $10 billion in jumbo loans. That rose to $27 billion in 2011 and to $41 billion in 2012, with the average loan at $1 million, Gwizdz said.

Less than half of jumbos tend to go to refinancings, while almost three quarters of conventional mortgages were for refinancings last year, Cecala said. That, too, should boost jumbo activity in 2013 as refis taper off and the housing market picks up.

Better deals, narrower spreads
Interest rates on jumbos have been approaching those of the so-called conforming loans, even though they don't have agency backing. In mid-February, for example, the average rate on 30-year fixed-rate jumbo loans was 3.98 percent while the average rate for 30-year conventional loans was 3.75 percent, making the spread between them just 0.23 percentage points, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

Pre-crisis, rates on jumbo loans were typically around 0.25 percentage points higher than those on conventional loans, says Keith Gumbinger of HSH Associates, a mortgage research firm in Pompton Plains, N.J. At the height of the financial crisis in December 2008, it hit 1.8 percentage points.

"I just locked in a $900,000 loan at 3.5 percent," said Amy Slotnick, vice president of Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp., in Needham, Mass. "I can't even get a conforming loan at that rate."

Jumbos loans are priced well now because only the most qualified borrowers can get them. Lending standards, which were notoriously lax pre-crisis, have intensified as the loans have returned to market.

"At one point all you needed was a pulse" says Matt Silver, director of the Chicago Association of Realtors, and a real estate agent who specializes in high end Chicago properties. "Now you have to have all of your ducks in a row."

Those standards will get even more restrictive in 2014, when Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules take effect. The CFPB rules are likely to kill the market for interest-only mortgages that had made up roughly 10 percent of the jumbo market, according to the Mortgage Bankers of America.

The rules also offer lawsuit protection for lenders who require that borrowers keep their debt payments at 43 percent or less of monthly income. Rick Sharga, of Carrington Mortgage Holdings in Greenwich, Conn., said that could be problematic for the jumbo market, because many high-income and high net worth borrowers don't fit that guideline but still have plenty of money on hand to repay their loans.

Today a borrower typically needs to put up 30 percent of equity, show a FICO credit score topping 760, provide years of tax records and prove that he or she has a year of mortgage payments in the bank. After meeting that stringent criteria, the typical jumbo borrower is probably a reasonable bet for a lender.

"Not just a good risk," says Slotnick. "A great risk."

Secondary market pickup
Like many jumbo lenders, Wells has been keeping the loans it makes in its own portfolio instead of selling them off.

"Holding a jumbo loan is an attractive investment for banks sitting on lots of low rate deposits," says Mike Fratantoni, vice president of research and economics at the Mortgage Bankers Association. But eventually, lenders will need to sell off those loans to raise more money to make loans.

There has been some activity in the secondary market for these big loans - Redwood Trust Inc. led the way when it started packaging jumbos in 2010. Credit Suisse and Shellpoint Partners, a private mortgage-focused firm, have followed or made plans to do so, and JP Morgan Chase & Co. is reportedly preparing its own jumbo-backed offering. But other investment firms, burned in the credit crisis, remain cautious.

Indeed, back in 2007, 61.3 percent of jumbo loans were securitized, Cecala said. In the first 9 months of 2012, just 1.7 percent of jumbo loans were securitized, up from 0.4 percent in 2011 and 0.2 percent in 2010.

Secondary market players and investors may come around as they see how the jumbo bet has paid off for Redwood - the real estate investment trust's share price is up roughly 96 percent since Dec. 31, 2011. Redwood itself plans to buy and package $7 billion in jumbo loans in 2013, more than triple the $2 billion it securitized in 2012.

Without more Redwood-like deals, lenders - and particularly smaller banks like Everbank - will run out of cash to lend to jumbo borrowers. If rates rise, they will have other places to find yield.

Says HSH's Gumbinger: "There's no doubt (jumbos) are profitable today. But when you're sitting on $100 million in mortgages yielding 4 percent and you can use that capital to earn 6 or 7 or 8 percent? You're going to have to liquefy them somehow."

Additional reporting by Leah Schnurr and Tim Reid.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/jumbo-home-loans-are-back-far-below-2007-levels-1C8573250

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Debug & Iterate team-up podcast: The future of human interface

Marc Edwards of Bjango, Guy English of Kicking Bear, Loren Brichter of Atebits, Sebastiaan de With of DoubleTwist, and Rene Ritchie of Mobile Nations talk human interfaces of the future, including Siri, Google Now, Kinect, Leap, MYO, Project Glass, iWatch, Oculus Rift, and more!

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Panelists

Marc Edwards (@marcedwards) of Bjango
Guy English (@gte) of Kicking Bear
Loren Brichter (@lorenb) of Atebits
Sebastiaan de With (@sdw) of Icon Designer
Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) of iMore.com

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/sWOShkqZDtQ/story01.htm

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2 police officers shot dead in Santa Cruz, Calif.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) ? Two police detectives were shot and killed while investigating a sexual assault complaint, and a suspect was also fatally shot after a brief chase, authorities said.

The veteran officers, one male and one female, were shot around 3:30 p.m. as they went to a suspect's home to follow up on the case. Their deaths were confirmed by Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak.

A suspect was shot and killed a short time later while authorities were pursuing the gunman, the sheriff's office said.

After the officers were shot, nearby residents received an automatic police call warning them to stay locked inside. About half an hour later, more than a dozen semi-automatic shots echoed down the streets in a brief barrage of gunfire that killed the suspect.

Police Chief Kevin Vogel said Sgt. Loren Butch Baker, a 28-year veteran, and Detective Elizabeth Butler, a 10-year veteran, were shot and killed.

"There aren't words to describe this horrific tragedy," he said. "This is the darkest day in the history of the Santa Cruz police department."

The suspect who was killed in the shooting was identified as 35-year-old Jeremy Goulet, who was arrested Friday after a co-worker at a Santa Cruz coffee shop alleged he went to her house and made inappropriate sexual advances. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that he was fired the next day.

To investigate the complaint, the detectives went to the house where Goulet was living and an altercation ensued, leading to the officers being fired upon, authorities said.

The detectives called for backup and neighbors also summoned police. Responding officers located Goulet a short time later. The sheriff's office said he was killed in the gunfire that followed.

After the shootings, police went door-to-door in the neighborhood, searching homes, garages, even closets to determine whether there might be additional suspects.

Police, sheriff's deputies and FBI agents filled intersections, some with guns drawn, in what is ordinarily a quiet, residential neighborhood in the community about 60 miles south of San Francisco.

A store clerk a few buildings away from the shooting said the barrage of gunfire was "terrifying."

"We ducked. We have big desks so under the desks we went," said the clerk, who spoke on condition of anonymity and asked that her store not be identified because she feared for her safety.

Two schools were locked down during the shooting. The students were later evacuated by bus to the County Government Center about half a mile away.

As darkness fell, helicopters and light aircraft patrolled above the neighborhood, which is about a mile from downtown Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The campus of University of California, Santa Cruz, is about five miles away.

The city's mayor, Hilary Bryant, said in a statement that the city was shocked over the shootings.

"Tonight we are heartbroken at the loss of two of our finest police officers who were killed in the line of duty, protecting the community we love," the statement said. "This is an exceptionally shocking and sad day for Santa Cruz and our Police Department."

Goulet worked as a barista at a coffee shop in the Santa Cruz harbor. He was convicted in Portland, Ore., in May 2008 of peeping at a 22-year-old woman who was showering in her condominium and of carrying concealed weapon, according to a Portland newspaper, The Oregonian. He was put on probation but, after a dispute with his probation officer, was sentenced to two years in jail.

The violence comes amid a recent spate of assaults in the city, which community leaders had planned to address in a downtown rally scheduled for Tuesday. That, along with a city council meeting, was canceled after teary-eyed city leaders learned of the deaths.

Those shootings include the killing of a 32-year-old martial arts instructor who was shot outside a popular downtown bar and restaurant; the robbery of a UC Santa Cruz student who was shot in the head; a 21-year-old woman who was raped and beaten on the UC Santa Cruz campus; and a couple who fought off two men during a home invasion.

___

Associated Press writer John S. Marshall in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/2-police-officers-shot-dead-california-053657177.html

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Texas public school students don burqas, learn that Muslim terrorists are freedom fighters

Texas public schools have come under fire again. This time, a teacher allegedly encouraged high school girls to dress up in full-length Islamic burqas and then instructed the entire class that Muslim terrorists are actually freedom fighters.

The incident occurred in a world geography class at Lumberton High School in the small town of Lumberton, Texas. The general topic of the class that day was Islam.

An unnamed student informed WND that the teacher said, ?We are going to work to change your perception of Islam.?

?I do not necessarily agree with this,? the teacher also allegedly said, ?but I am supposed to teach you that we are not to call these people terrorists anymore, but freedom fighters.?

The controversial lesson came from a lesson plan provided by CSCOPE, an all-embracing, online K-12 educational curriculum used in 80 percent of the school districts in Texas. A rapidly growing chorus of critics charges that CSCOPE is a radical, backdoor way for progressives to circumvent both the Texas legislative process and the desires of local school boards and communities. (Ten shocking things CSCOPE is teaching kids in Texas)

A student in the class told WND that the burqa-related lesson focused mainly on the lives of women in Muslim countries. The enveloping outer face and body covering was treated more or less as a fashion accessory.

Apparently, no mention was made of the fact that women in Saudi Arabia and Iran must wear the garment under threat of arrest and criminal punishment.

At the end of class, the teacher assigned a paper about Egypt. A student explained to WND that the topic of the paper was ?how Egypt was a good country until democracy took over, and that things were finally corrected when the Muslim Brotherhood came into power.?

State Sen. Dan Patrick, chairman of the Texas state senate?s education committee, told Fox News that he found the photograph of the burqa-clad female students disturbing. Patrick was also concerned that the CSCOPE lesson apparently blames democracy for turmoil in Egypt and paints the Muslim Brotherhood as some political savior.

?Parents are very sensitive to any issue that seems to be anti-American ? that blames democracy for some sort of trouble in the world,? Patrick told Fox News.

The CSCOPE curriculum seems to be inherently agenda-driven ? particularly in history and social studies courses. The curriculum provider has foisted some hilariously biased coursework on public school students in The Lone Star State.

For example, CSCOPE has given students material suggesting that Christianity is a cult that parallels the death and resurrection in the story of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead. The same material takes pains to point out that early Christians were accused of incest, cannibalism and other atrocities.

There?s an infamous chart that innocuously describes communism as ?the idea of living together in a ?commune? where all people work together for everyone.?

Another notorious CSCOPE lesson (now ostensibly removed from circulation) depicts the Boston Tea Party, the famous protest against taxation without representation, as an act of terrorism.

As WND notes, CSCOPE also defines Republicans as lovers of ?big business over labor unions.? Warm and cuddly Democrats, meanwhile, ?will spend more tax dollars on education to benefits [sic] each individual.? (The grammar error is CSCOPE?s, not WND?s.)

CSCOPE labels fascism and Nazism as ?conservative,? despite the fact that both ideologies prescribe that the state should control everything and own all resources.

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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Gupta ordered to pay Goldman Sachs $6.22 million

Jonathan Stempel , Reuters ? ? ? 13 hrs.

A federal judge on Monday ordered former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director Rajat Gupta to reimburse $6.22 million to help the Wall Street bank cover its legal expenses related to his criminal insider trading case.

Goldman had sought to recover $6.91 million, and U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said the bank had proved it was entitled to 90 percent of what it requested.

Gupta, 64, is appealing his June 15, 2012, conviction and two-year prison term for feeding confidential information he had learned at Goldman board meetings to Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Group hedge fund manager and former billionaire.

Rajaratnam has been a central figure in a multi-year U.S. government crackdown on insider trading. Gupta is a former global managing director of the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, and is the highest corporate executive convicted in the probe.

Jurors found Gupta guilty of leaks during the second half of 2008, including news related to a crucial $5 billion investment in Goldman by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc at the height of the global financial crisis.

Goldman had sought to recover fees it had paid its law firm Sullivan & Cromwell in connection with Gupta's criminal case and related matters. It cited the federal Mandatory Victims Restitution Act, which requires restitution in some fraud cases.

Gupta opposed restitution but Rakoff, who presided over the criminal trial, said nearly all of what Goldman sought was a "necessary, direct, and foreseeable result of the investigation and prosecution of Gupta's offense of conviction."

Rakoff said Goldman could also recover legal costs linked to a related U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil case against Gupta, and to the criminal case against Rajaratnam.

He said Gupta's opposition to the latter "ignores the glaring fact" that he had been convicted of conspiring with Rajaratnam to commit securities fraud.

But the judge said Goldman did not deserve all it sought.

Rakoff said some entries in the "voluminous" 542 pages of billing records he reviewed did not qualify because they involved depositions in civil cases that followed the criminal conviction.

And Rakoff said Goldman on "a few occasions" assigned too many lawyers to the case - "perhaps perfectly appropriate on the assumption that Goldman Sachs wished to spare no expense on a matter of great importance to it," but more than reasonably necessary under the law.

Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally said: "We are pleased that the court ordered Mr. Gupta to pay restitution."

Richard Davis, a lawyer for Gupta, said his client plans to appeal.

Rajaratnam is separately appealing his criminal conviction and 11-year prison term, saying FBI wiretap evidence should not have been admitted by U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell at his 2011 trial. Holwell is now in private practice.

The case is U.S. v. Gupta, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-cr-00907.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/gupta-ordered-pay-goldman-sachs-6-22-million-1C8546818

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Chimps 'solve puzzles for fun'

25 February 2013 Last updated at 08:53 ET

Chimpanzees enjoy trying to solve brainteasers, according to research done at Bedfordshire's Whipsnade Zoo.

Scientists set up a game for six chimps that involved moving red dice through pipes until they fell into a container.

The same task was also carried out using brazil nuts instead of dice, so that success led to a treat.

However, the Zoological Society of London found the apes enjoyed getting stuck into a puzzle, with or without the opportunity to win a prize.

The chimpanzees, all members of an adult family group at the zoo, had to prod sticks into holes in the pipes to change the direction of the dice and get them to fall in the right place.

They did not receive advance training on how to play the game and the scientists said the apes were given complete freedom whether or not to pit their wits in the puzzle.

'Feel-good reward'

Researcher Fay Clark, from the society, said they noticed the chimps were "keen to complete the puzzle" for its own sake, regardless of whether or not they received a food reward.

"This strongly suggests they get similar feelings of satisfaction to humans who often complete brain-games for a feel-good reward," she said.

"For chimps in the wild, this task is a little bit like foraging for insects or honey inside a tree stump or a termite mound, except more challenging because the dice do not stick to the tool."

Researchers created higher "levels" of challenge by connecting many pipes together, and making them opaque so the dice or nuts could only be glimpsed through small holes.

The findings are published in the March edition of the American Journal of Primatology.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-21573339#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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