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Obama, in Afghanistan, says he will make troop announcement soon

President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan on Sunday to visit U.S. forces who are wrapping up a 13-year mission and signaled that he intends to keep a small number of troops in the country for training and counter-terrorism operations. Cheers erupted among the hundreds of U.S. troops gathered in a Bagram hangar when Obama said that at the end of this year, "America's war in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Afghanistan will come to a responsible end." With Afghanistan immersed in a runoff election to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai, Obama did not meet Afghan government officials nor travel to the capital Kabul. Karzai has long been out of favor with Washington over his refusal to sign a bilateral security agreement to allow U.S. troops to stay beyond 2014.   true       Obama's fourth visit to Afghanistan came as he faces criticism at home over a foreign policy often derided as too pass

California gunman, in manifesto, said police nearly thwarted plot

A 22-year-old man who killed six people before taking his own life in a rampage through a California college town said in a chilling manifesto that police who knocked on his door last month to check on his welfare nearly foiled his plot. Elliot Rodger, the son of a Hollywood director, stabbed three people to death in his apartment before gunning down three more victims on Friday night in the town of Isla Vista near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). Rodger, who posted a threatening video railing against women online shortly before his rampage, stalked Isla Vista in his car and on foot, firing on bystanders in a killing spree that ended when he killed himself after a shootout with sheriff's deputies, police said.   true       But less than a month before his attacks, after he had planned the killings and obtained the guns he would use, the community college student opened his door to a knock to find about seven officers looking for him. "I

'Chocolate King' Poroshenko claims victory in Ukraine presidential poll

Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire chocolate manufacturer, claimed the Ukrainian presidency with an emphatic election victory on Sunday, taking on a fraught mission to quell pro-Russian rebels and steer his fragile nation closer to the West. A veteran survivor of Ukraine's feuding political class who threw his weight and money behind the revolt that brought down his Moscow-backed predecessor three months ago, the burly 48-year-old won 55 percent in exit polls on a first-round ballot marred by the reality that millions were unable to vote in the troubled eastern regions. Results will not be announced until Monday but runner-up Yulia Tymoshenko, on 13 percent, made clear she would concede, sparing the country a tense three weeks until a runoff round.   true       Poroshenko, known as the "Chocolate King", has no time to lose to make good on pledges to end "war" with separatists in the Russian-speaking east, negotiate a stable new relationship with Moscow and res

Hedge fund 400 Capital gains on RMBS bets, makes new hires

Hedge fund 400 Capital returned 3.26 percent during the first three months of 2014, beating its benchmarks as bets on residential mortgage backed securities paid off. _0"> The firm, founded five years ago and run by Chris Hentemann, told clients in its first quarter letter seen by Reuters, "The overweighting to RMBS (residential mortgage-backed securities) drove absolute returns for the fund in 1Q14." The fund's gains beat the HFRI fund weighted composite index' 1.1 percent return as well as the Barclay's U.S. Aggregate return of 1.84 percent. Last year the fund returned 15.23 percent and its average annual return is 20.43 percent. The fund still has the bulk of its assets, 68.13 percent, in residential loans, but the exposure has been reduced some since the end of last year when the fund had 72.82 percent of its assets in RMBS.   true       Improving fundamentals, including fewer first time defaults and fewer nonperforming loans, have kept the secto

Banned hedge fund manager Micalizzi arrested in Italy: prosecutors

Italian police have arrested a former university lecturer and ex-hedge fund manager who was fined 3 million pounds ($5.1 million) in 2012 for concealing massive losses to investors, Milan prosecutors said on Wednesday. _0"> In a statement, prosecutors said they had also issued arrest warrants for 14 associates of Alberto Micalizzi, who has been dubbed by the Italian press as the Italian equivalent to U.S. fraudster Bernie Madoff. In a 168-page arrest warrant seen by Reuters, prosecutors allege that Micalizzi was the head of two parallel criminal rings that carried out sophisticated fraud involving forgery of financial documents against a range of companies.   true       The companies targeted by Micalizzi and his network include gas operator Snam, Pirelli, JP Morgan, UBI Banca and UBS Monaco. Fraudulent acts continued well after Britain's Financial Services Authority banned Micalizzi in May 2012 saying he was not "fit and proper" to perform any role in regul

Silent Circle, maker of anti-snooping phones, raises $30 million

Silent Circle, a company that sells mobile phones and apps designed to thwart government surveillance, said on Wednesday it has raised $30 million in financing in a round led by Ross Perot Jr. and private investment fund Cain Capital LLC. _0"> The company sells apps for Apple Inc's iOS and devices using class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Google Inc's Android operating systems that encrypt phone calls and texts. It also offers secure video conferencing for machines running class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Microsoft Corp's Windows class="mandelbrot_refrag"> software . In February it launched "Blackphone," a mobile phone loaded with a customized version of the Android operating system known as PrivateOS and loaded with a suite of security and privacy apps.   true       The company also said on Wednesday that it added Perot and Sir Peter Bonfield, the former chief executive and chairman of British Telecom, to its advisory boa

U.S. financial planning board to spot-check use of 'fee only' term

An organization that certifies and develops standards for financial planners is conducting spot checks of advisers it lists on its websites to make sure they are not misidentifying themselves as "fee only." The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (CFP Board), in a notice sent to its 70,000 planners on Wednesday, said it would review sources of compensation for advisers who market themselves as "fee only." Advisers who are "fee only" charge customers for financial planning services and are able to market themselves as impartial in the recommendations they make to customers. Other advisers make money through commissions charged on sales and performance of financial products and investments.   true       The CFP Board will compare compensation that advisers enter on its websites to public sources such as regulatory filings and the firms' own web pages, it said. Not all advisers who use the "fee only" label will be subject to the

Prudential's Greg Peters says bond yields signal recession possibility

Greg Peters, the former class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Morgan Stanley chief global asset strategist who sounded an early alarm about the financial crisis, said on Wednesday there is currently a remote chance of another U.S. recession but bond yields are signaling a troubling scenario. Peters, now a senior portfolio manager who helps manage over $418 billion in assets at Prudential Investments, told Reuters that another recession, "is not off the table completely. The market is telling you that probability is higher today than six months ago." The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond has dropped conspicuously to 2.53 percent from 3 percent at the start of the year.   true       Peters says fundamental factors, led by slowing growth, are pushing yields lower. Prudential's official GDP estimate is 2.9 percent this year but the firm is moving the guidance lower. "You can see that the bond market is not buying 3 percent GDP growth." Indeed, t

As tech millionaires multiply, wealth advisers struggle to connect

When the nine-person startup he co-founded was bought by class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Facebook for a reported $15 million in January, Cemre Gungor, 27, was inundated with phone calls and emails from wealth advisers. Yet he spurned them all, opting instead to open an account with Betterment, an online financial adviser launched in 2010 that automatically invests in a portfolio of exchange traded funds based mainly on a client's age. "My personality doesn't lend itself to being the sort of person who would research good wealth managers and then trust them with making decisions. I don't want to spend any time thinking or caring about that," said Gungor, who grew up in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Turkey and Finland before moving to the U.S. He and others of his generation are posing a challenge for wealth advisers who are streaming into Silicon Valley and San Francisco after the public stock offerings of companies such as class="ma

S&P, BlackRock plan 'smart' bond indexes and funds

Companies such as class="mandelbrot_refrag"> BlackRock Inc and Standard & Poor's are taking a popular stock fund strategy and applying it to class="mandelbrot_refrag"> bonds . For more than a decade, asset managers have been creating stock funds that track indexes designed to outperform those based on their components' market value. Bond funds are the next frontier for index designers who use this "smart beta" approach to boost returns by taking advantage of market inefficiencies. class="mandelbrot_refrag"> S&P class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Dow Jones class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Indices , a unit of McGraw Hill Financial, said it expects to unveil smart beta bond indexes in the fourth quarter.   true       BlackRock has not given a timetable, but is experimenting with different ways of weighting components of the broad Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond Index to produce exchange-traded funds

Junk muni funds shine from land, leverage and Detroit sewer bets

After Detroit filed for class="mandelbrot_refrag"> bankruptcy last summer, portfolio managers at Eaton Vance municipal bond funds saw a gem hidden in the plumbing of the beleaguered Midwestern city. As the prices of 30-year class="mandelbrot_refrag"> bonds backed by Detroit's water and sewer system plunged, the Boston-based firm swooped in to become the top investor in them. The bet paid off as the Detroit class="mandelbrot_refrag"> bonds recovered to nearly full value, helping the $763 million Eaton Vance High-Yield Municipal Income Fund post a 10.76 percent year-to-date return. That is nearly double the 5.39 percent average return across nearly 600 municipal funds tracked by Lipper Inc, and ranks it No. 9 among U.S. municipal bond funds.   true       Eaton Vance's payoff is just one example of the recovery of municipal junk bond funds so far this year, after a tough 2013. Using plays on land, low borrowing costs, and distress

Concentrated mutual funds pullling in assets, not returns

Investors have been flocking to highly concentrated stock mutual funds in the hope that more daring bets will produce bigger returns, but it hasn't worked out that way. So-called concentrated mutual funds - those that hold fewer than 30 class="mandelbrot_refrag"> stocks and are by nature risky - are growing far faster than other types of actively managed funds. But some 80 percent of these funds are posting performances that put them in the bottom half of their peers, according to data from class="mandelbrot_refrag"> S&P CapitalIQ. Over the five years to December 2013, the assets invested in concentrated funds jumped from $44.5 billion to approximately $117 billion, according to data from fund tracker class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Morningstar , a growth rate 67 percent greater than actively managed funds as a whole.   true       The move to riskier funds may come, ironically, as a side effect of the growing popularity of passive in

Move over, Florida! Remote locations lure retirees

If you had to guess where a particular 78-year-old American retiree who plays bridge and has three great-grandchildren lives, what would you say? Odds are you guessed Florida, or maybe Arizona - two sunny states that have long been popular with the senior set. But you'd be wrong, at least in this case. Lois O'Grady lives in Vermillion, South Dakota.   true       "It's an easy and comfortable place to live, and very safe and friendly," says O'Grady, who moved from the relatively bustling metropolis of Omaha to be closer to her family. "It reminds me of Mayberry, if you are old enough to remember the old Andy Griffith TV show," O'Grady says. There's not a whole lot going on in the area, O'Grady admits. The population is a shade over 10,000, and there aren't too many stores apart from a Wal-Mart. But the region has another thing going for it: South Dakota was recently named the best state to retire in the nation, handily defeatin

An army of robots may soon be deployed: to care for the aged

Imagine you're 85, and living alone. Your children are halfway across the country, and you're widowed. You have a live-in aide - but it's not human. Your personal robot reminds you to take your medicine, monitors your diet and exercise, plays class="mandelbrot_refrag"> games with you, and even helps you connect with family members on the Internet. Some technology experts see this as the answer to a predicted shortage of caregivers to serve our rapidly aging population. Labs around the world are working on this, and already some robots are being marketed successfully. Robots have been designed to help people with physical rehabilitation, assist in a nursing home, and even provide "telepresence" - in which a robot acts as an avatar, a physical presence for someone you communicate with at long distance. A conference in San Francisco last week on class="mandelbrot_refrag"> innovation and aging featured a keynote address by Cynthia Bre

Wall St. watchdog boosts tech hires as two big data projects loom

An industry-funded watchdog is beefing up its aging technology as it takes on broader oversight of U.S. stock trading and seeks to manage both a new surveillance program and data-collection system that will usher in an era of big data on Wall Street. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is preparing to build the initial phases of a mammoth broker data-collection system in 2015 known as the Comprehensive Automated Risk Data System, or CARDS, pending approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. FINRA also is one of 10 bidders to run the consolidated audit trail, or CAT, an industry-wide order-tracking system that will replace an existing FINRA system. The SEC ordered the CAT after it took months for regulators to reconstruct trading during the "flash crash" in May 2010.   true       The number of people employed by FINRA in technology has grown to about 1,100 from several hundred a few years ago as the regulator won surveillance responsibilities away f