| IMF Executive Board Completes Third and Final Review Under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility for Kenya and ...
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today completed the third and final review of Kenya's economic performance under a three-year Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) arrangement. The completion of the review enables the release of an amount equivalent to SDR 37.5 million (about US$59.3 million), bringing total disbursements under the arrangement to SDR 150 million (about US$237.4 million). In completing the review, the Board approved waivers for the nonobservance of four performance criteria and one prior action. These included one quantitative performance criterion on the reserve money of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), one quantitative performance criterion pertaining to the non-accumulation of new external payment arrears, one structural performance criterion on the submission to Cabinet for approval of a strategy to initiate the sale of the government and the National Social security Fund (NSSF) shares in the National Bank of Kenya, and one structural performance criterion on making the Public Procurement Oversight Authority fully operational under the Public Procurement and Disposal Act.
CTRC to become part of UT Health Science Center
The Cancer Therapy and Research Center, where countless thousands of San Antonians have received medical care over three decades, along with patients from around the world seeking the earliest access to experimental anticancer drugs, will become part of the University of Texas Health Science Center in December, leaders of both institutions said. The merger is expected to help draw top-level cancer researchers to San Antonio at a time when the approval of Proposition 15, which will pump $3 billion into Texas cancer research centers over the next decade, promises to make the state highly attractive to scientists. Although the CTRC board was meeting at 11:30 a.m. today to finalize the deal, a letter of agreement was signed on Wednesday by board members of the 33-year-old CTRC, health science center and UT system leaders.
Our view on predatory lending: 'Fee harvester' credit cards scam vulnerable consumers
Our view on predatory lending: 'Fee harvester' credit cards scam vulnerable consumers When issuers charge $175 for $75 in credit, something's not right. The credit card solicitation to Chicago consumer Thelma Perry offered "a credit limit of up to $1,500." What Perry would get, instead, was a $250 credit line that was worth far less. First came the $9 "processing" fee to accompany the application. Then the card issuer tacked on a $119 "acceptance fee," a $50 "membership fee" and the first $6 installment of a $72 annual "participation fee" — leaving the cardholder with $75 in actual buying power. Perry sued, arguing in essence that this wasn't much of an offer. One of the three federal appeals court judges agreed, calling the solicitation "an unconscionably one-sided financial deal" offered to "extract one creative fee on top of another from consumers who are either naive, desperate or both." Sadly for consumers, the other two judges held that the offer from First National Bank of Pierre, S.D., was "not without value" and rejected Perry's claims.
Sharky Extreme : News From Inside The Industry
AMD has fired back against the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT juggernaut, with a new line of mainstream performance cards. The ATI Radeon HD 3800 series offers two models at launch, the ATI Radeon HD 3850 with 256MB of GDDR3 memory and the ATI Radeon HD 3870 with 512MB GDDR4 memory. These cards both use a 55nm process technology, and include Microsoft DirectX10.1 support. Another interesting option is the ATI CrossFireX feature, which offers tri and quad multi-GPU support for Radeon HD 3800 series buyers. Performance-per-watt has really become a catch phrase over at AMD, and the company is quick to promote the Radeon HD 3800 series as the first graphics processors to use TSMC's 55nm process technology, which has allowed for a 2X increase in performance-per-watt. AMD is also pushing the enthusiast-performance-at-a-mainstream-price button, and said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD, "With the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series we are redefining the market for enthusiast graphics with a new class of price, performance and features that have never been seen before in this industry." AMD has set a $179 MSRP for the ATI Radeon HD 3850 256MB, while the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is a bit higher at $219.
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