Banks Plan Fees for Using Debit Cards in USA

The American banking industry, which has been raising fees and doing away with free services, has a new target: debit-card users.

Bank of America Corp. is laying plans to charge millions of customers a $5 monthly fee to use their debit cards, and other big banks are expected to follow suit. The industry says it needs the fees to recoup revenue it will lose because of new government regulations that cap what they can charge merchants for debit-card transactions.

Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank by assets, disclosed the plan on Thursday in a memo to its senior staff. It intends to begin collecting the fees nationwide early next year.

New federal limits on debit-card "swipe fees" are expected to cost U.S. banks an estimated $6.6 billion a year in lost revenue.

To offset that lost revenue, many banks have eliminated or scaled back debit-rewards programs, added monthly fees for checking accounts and raised minimum balance requirements for customers to avoid certain fees.

The limits on debit-card swipe fees—one of the most contentious regulations to arise from the financial crisis—were finalized by the Federal Reserve Board in June and take effect on Saturday. The new rules will cap at 24 cents the fee merchants pay banks each time a customer buys something with a debit card, down from the current average of 44 cents. The rules apply to banks with $10 billion and more in assets.

The fee will apply to standard checking accounts, but not most premium accounts held by affluent customers. Banks typically exempt their premium accounts from many fees because they tend to be more profitable than standard accounts with lower balances.

Hyderabad Youth - Nikaah in Masjid

The trend of performing Nikah in mosques is on the rise in the city of Hyderabad, India. This is lauded by many as a commendable move and it needs to be promoted so as to prevent from extravagance in marriages and to make the act of Nikah simple and easy. The largest number of Nikahs are performed at Masjid Azizia Humayun nagar and then at Shahi Masjid Public garden in this city.

The second largest mosque of the old city next to Makkah Masjid is Masjid Hakeem Vazir Ali, Fateh darwaza Chandulal Baradari colony where Nikahs are performed frequently.

Majority of the people who perform Nikah at mosque arrange for the videography on the occasion of Nikah ceremony. The act is unislamic besides that it invalidates the virtuous act of performing the Nikah at the mosque. Keeping in view the fact the mosque committee of Masjid Hakeem Vazir Ali has installed a board in the mosque. “Photography and Videography are prohibited according to Shariah” is inscribed on it.

Many also say that all mosque committees should follow suit and take such measures so that sanctity of Mosque may not be violated and Muslim community is prevented from such non Shariah activities.

Seems  the city of Nawaabs is going back to it's roots again.

Google AdSense display ads will now feature the +1 button

In the next month, Google will introduce the +1 button and personal recommendations to display ads. The +1 button will begin to appear on AdSense for Content and AdSense for Mobile Content display ad formats -- image, animated gif, and Flash. +1s will be one additional signal to help determine an ad's relevance and we'll continue to show the ads that will generate the most revenue for the users.

They previously launched the +1 button on Google search and for publisher sites to make it easier for people to share and discover content across the web. Soon, your users will be able to endorse specific ads and make the ads more likely to appear to their social connections. These recommendations could help the readers notice ads on the site more, leading to higher returns for publishers over time.

The World's Biggest Debtor Nations (CNBC Report)

I recently came across an article form CNBC which showed a list of the largest debtors (Countries) in the world as percentage of their GDP.

Deficit spending, government debt and private sector borrowing are the norm in most western countries, but due in part to the financial crisis, some nations and economies are in considerably worse debt positions than others.

External debt is a measure of a nation's foreign liabilities, capital plus interest that the government and institutions within a nation's borders must eventually pay. This number not only includes government debt, but also debt owed by corporations and individuals to entities outside their home country.

This report takes a look at the world's 75 largest economies to see which ones have the highest external debt to GDP ratio, calculated using the most recent numbers from the World Bank.



Below is a recent YouTube video:

Google introduces Search by Image

Now you can explore the web in an entirely new way by beginning your Google search with an image.

Facebook teams with Twitter, Google Plus Threatened

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” This is, currently, the motto of both Facebook and Twitter as both of them have joined forces for a better social networking experience.

Could this spell doom for Google+? 

Facebook, which currently has over 750 million active users, will now allow users to update Twitter accounts on their Facebook platform. This new feature will enable the Facebook user account to update the twitter account, which is linked, with every update from Facebook.

The new feature will allow users post updates on both Facebook and Twitter at the same time, and will provide more content to Twitter. Facebook, now, will also be updating Twitter feeds. To start, the user needs to go to facebook.com/twitter and link the profile page to the twitter account.


This may or may not prove to be a danger sign for Google+ which is competing against both Facebook and Twitter, according to a PC Magazine report.

Twitter, currently, as compared to Facebook has only 100 million active users and many of the users rarely access Twitter.

Paris bans Muslim street prayers

A ban on saying prayers in the street, a practice by French Muslims unable to find space in mosques, has come into effect in the capital, Paris.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant has offered believers the use of a disused fire brigade barracks instead.

The phenomenon of street prayers, which see Muslims spreading mats on footpaths, became a political issue after far right protests.

France is home to the biggest Muslim minority in Western Europe.

By some estimates, as many as six million French people, or just under 10% of the population, are Muslims, with origins in France's former North African colonies.

Their integration has been a source of political debate in recent years, and earlier this year France became the first EU state to ban the wearing of the Islamic veil in public.

Many worshippers have been positive about the new space .The new ban came into force at midnight (22:00 GMT) on Thursday, in time for traditional Muslim Friday prayers.

Speaking earlier this week to Le Figaro, Mr Gueant said about 1,000 people were using two streets in the capital's multi-ethnic Goutte d'Or district for prayers.

He said an agreement had been reached with two local mosques for the state to rent out the disused barracks on Boulevard Ney with floorspace of 2,000 sq m (yds) for three years.

To encourage believers to use the new space, prayers would not be held inside the existing mosques for the first few weeks.

An overseer at the barracks said the space, with a capacity of 2,000, was full.

"It's the beginning of a solution," Sheikh Mohammed Salah Hamza told Reuters news agency. "The faithful are very pleased to be here. "

"I think it's great. It's good. Before they used to pray outside and that wasn't good at all," Kaddar Abdelkader, who used to pray in the street, told the BBC.

Woman receives calls from fans, threatens to sue Amitabh Bachchan

Confusion over Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan's mobile number led to a woman receiving thousands of anonymous calls from across the globe.

Now the woman has decided to move court against the star for allegedly causing mental harassment to her and her family.

In TV show Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) on September 12, a contestant asked for the mega star's mobile number. Bachchan obliged to her request and revealed the number as 987730000, noticeably a nine-digit number.

This led to thousands of Big B fans across the globe calling on 9877300000, not 987730000, by adding another zero to make the latter a 10-digit number.

This number 9877300000 was being used by the sister of Puneet Bansal, an industrialist and resident of Mandi Gobindgarh town of district Fatehgarh Sahib. Bansal told media persons today that they received thousands of calls on the night of September 12 not only from India but also from abroad.

Puneet said their family was mentally harassed. He said they also contacted mobile service provider in this regard but could not get immediate relief. The woman's family will now move court and serve notice to Bachchan.

IBM SuperComputer to treat Patients

Watson, the television game show-playing supercomputer from IBM, is teaming up with health insurer WellPoint to assist medical professionals in diagnosing and treating patients.

IBM and WellPoint said on Monday it will be the first commercial application for the computer which defeated two human champions on the popular television game show 'Jeopardy!' in February.

"Watson is expected to serve as a powerful tool in the physician's decision making process," they said.

IBM and WellPoint, which has 34 million members, said they will 'develop and launch Watson-based solutions to help improve patient care through the delivery of up-to-date, evidence-based health care for millions of Americans'.

"Jeopardy!" tests a player's knowledge in a range of categories, from geography to politics to history to sports and entertainment.

Watson, which understands spoken language, played the game by crunching through multiple algorithms at dizzying speed and attaching a percentage score to what it believed was the correct response.

"Watson's ability to analyse the meaning and context of human language, and quickly process vast amounts of information to suggest options targeted to a patient's circumstances, can assist decision makers, such as physicians and nurses, in identifying the most likely diagnosis and treatment options for their patients," IBM and WellPoint said.

Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas Watson, can rifle through 200 million pages of data and provide precise responses in just seconds.

"Using this extraordinary capability WellPoint is expected to enable Watson to allow physicians to easily coordinate medical data programmed into Watson with specified patient factors, to help identify the most likely diagnosis and treatment options in complex cases," IBM and WellPoint said.

"We envision that new applications will allow physicians to use Watson to consult patient medical histories, recent test results, recommended treatment protocols and the latest research findings loaded into Watson to discuss the best and most effective courses of treatment with their patients," they said.

WellPoint said it expects to begin employing Watson technology in early 2012 in clinical pilots with selected physician groups.

Netflix now works on Android devices

Netflix can now digest FroYo and Gingerbread. The video-streaming service's Android app now works on all devices running version 2.2 or 2.3, which would be the vast majority of Android phones and a number of tablets. Honeycomb users still get no red-envelope love, however.

Version 1.4 of the app dropped into the Android Market yesterday. Up until this version, Netflix had been compatible with a much smaller number of devices, with the development team tackling each device one at a time. In fact, when the app for Android first debuted in May, it was only functional on five devices.

Back then the company said it was having a hard time dealing with the notorious problem of Android fragmentation and had to "qualify phones" one at a time.

With subsequent releases, the number of compatible devices grew to 9 and then 24, and now it's everything except gadgets being used by the poor souls still stuck on Android 2.1, and the majority of Honeycomb tablets. According to Google's statistics, more than 82 percent of Android users are on FroYo or Gingerbread.

The app is free, but naturally you'll have to pony up $7.99 a month for the privilege of streaming video.

Kashmir wants Hazare in India

Anna Hazare is a sought-after person after his recent 12-day fast against corruption.

Looking at the enormous success enjoyed by the Gandhian, the Hurriyat Conference has appealed to Hazare to launch a movement against the government to unravel the truth over the issue of unmarked graves discovered in north Kashmir.

“Indian civil society has failed people in Kashmir time and again. We now pin our hopes on Hazare and want him to launch a struggle akin to the battle for the Jan Lokpal Bill to unravel the truth behind unmarked graves,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairperson of moderate Hurriyat. “We plan to send a formal letter to Hazare and seek his help.”

Mirwaiz said the Hurriyat Conference will hold a special meeting of the executive council to discuss the matter threadbare.

An inquiry report by the senior superintendent of police Jammu & Kashmir State Human Rights Commission Bashir Ahmad Yatoo states they have detected 2,156 unidentified bodies buried in 38 graveyards across five districts of north Kashmir.

Mirwaiz pointed out that 9,000 people who went missing from the custody of security forces have not been traced so far.

“We want to know where they are. We feel some answers lie in the graves,” Mirwaiz said, adding that there was a need to conduct DNA profiles of those buried in the unmarked graves and check that with the profiles of those who have disappeared in Kashmir.

“We want an impartial probe by an international agency,” he said.