Thousands more consumers have learned they are at risk in their own homes from faulty washing machines which have been added to Whirlpool’s expanding list of recalled models

Coca-Cola European Partners is issuing precautionary advice for opening Coca-Cola Original Taste 1.5 litre PET bottles because the bottles may have damaged neck rings which means that the bottle mi

General Mills recalls Green Giant Original Sweetcorn because some seams may be faulty due to a packaging fault, which could make this product unsafe to eat.

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government has decided to not move forward with the blue licence plate design for passenger vehicles following readability concerns.

'Kizie Aur Manny' under way as the Hindi adaptation of John Green's 'The Fault in Our Stars.'

The Western world remains where it has been for some time, delicately poised between anaemic recovery and a shock that could tip us back into economic contraction.

Perhaps the most conspicuous manifestation of the instability is that investors can't make up their minds whether the greater risk comes from surging inflation that stems largely from China's irrepressible growth or the deflationary impact of the unsustainable burden of debt on peripheral and not-so-peripheral eurozone (and other) economies.

And whence do investors flee when it all looks scary and uncertain, especially when there's a heightened probability of specie debasement - to gold, of course.

Unsurprisingly, with the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, implying that a writedown of Greece's sovereign obligations is an option, and with consumer inflation in China hitting 5.4% in March, there has been a flight to the putative safety of precious metal: the gold price hit a new record of $1,480.50 per ounce for June delivery yesterday and could well break through $1,500 within days (say the analysts). Silver is hitting 30-year highs.

In a way, if a sovereign borrower were to turn €100bn of debts (for example) into an obligation to repay 70bn euros, that would be a form of inflation - it has the same economic impact, a degradation of value, for the lender. But it is a localised inflation; only the specific creditors suffer directly (though there may be all sorts of spillover damage for others).

And only this morning there was another blow to the perceived value of a chunk of euro-denominated sovereign obligations. Moody's has downgraded Irish government debt to one level above junk - which is the equivalent of a bookmaker lengthening the odds the on that country's ability to avoid controlled or uncontrolled default.

Some would say that the Irish government has made a start in writing down debt, with the disclosure by the Irish finance minister Michael Noonan yesterday that he would want to impose up to 6bn euros of losses on holders of so-called subordinated loans to Irish banks.

But I suppose the big story in the eurozone, following the decision by the European Central Bank to raise interest rates, is that the region's excessive government and bank debts are more likely to be cut down to manageable size by a restructuring - writedowns of the amount owed - than by generalised inflation that erodes the real value of the principal.

The decision of the ECB to raise rates has to be seen as a policy decision that - in a worst case - a sovereign default by an Ireland, or Greece or Portugal would be less harmful than endemic inflation.

But is that right? How much damage would be wreaked if Greece or Ireland or Portugal attempted to reduce the nominal amount they owe to levels they felt they could afford?

Let's push to one side the reputational and economic costs to those countries - which are quite big things to ignore, by the way - and simply look at the damage to external creditors from a debt write down.

And I am also going to ignore the difference between a planned, consensual reduction in sums owed - a restructuring that takes place with the blessing of the rest of the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund - and a unilateral declaration of de facto bankruptcy by a Greece, Ireland or Portugal (although the shock value of the latter could have much graver consequences for the health of the financial system).

So the first question is how much of the impaired debt is held by institutions and investors that could not afford to take the losses.

Now I hope it isn't naive to assume that pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and central banks that hold Greek, or Irish or Portuguese debt can cope with losses generated by a debt restructuring.

The reason for mild optimism in that sense is that those who finance investments made by pension funds and insurers - that's you and me by the way - can't get their money out quickly or easily. We simply have to grin and bear the losses to the value of our savings, when the stewards of our savings make lousy investment decisions.

As for hedge funds, when they make bad bets, they can suffer devastating withdrawals of finance by their investors, as and when the returns generated swing from positive to negative. But so long as those hedge funds haven't borrowed too much, so long as they are not too leveraged - and most aren't these days - the impact on the financial system shouldn't be significant.

Finally, if the European Central Bank - for example - ends up incurring big losses on its substantial holdings of Greek, Portuguese and Irish debt, it can always be recapitalised by solvent eurozone nations, notably by Germany and France.

However this is to ignore the node of fragility in the financial system, the faultline - which is the banking industry.

In the financial system's network of interconnecting assets and liabilities, it is the banks as a cluster that always have the potential to amplify the impact of debt writedowns, in a way that can wreak wider havoc.

That's built into their main function, as maturity transformers. Since banks' creditors can always demand their money back at whim, but banks can't retrieve their loans from their creditors (homeowners, businesses, governments), bank losses above the norm can be painful both for banks and for the rest of us.

Any event that undermines confidence in the safety of money lent to banks, will - in a best case - make it more difficult for a bank to borrow and lend, and will, in the worst case, tip the bank into insolvency.

Which, of course, is what we saw on a global systemic scale from the summer of 2007 to the end of 2008. That's when creditors to banks became increasingly anxious about potential losses faced by banks from a great range of loans and investments, starting with US sub-prime.

So what we need to know is whether the banking system could afford losses generated by Greek, Irish and Portuguese defaults.

And to assess this, we need to know how much overseas banks have lent to the governments of these countries and also - probably - to the banks of these countries, in that recent painful experience has told us that bank liabilities become sovereign liabilities, when the going gets tough.

According to the latest published analysis by the Bank for International Settlements (the central bankers'central bank), the total exposure of overseas banks to the governments and banks of Greece, Portugal and Ireland is "just" $362.2bn, or £224bn,

Now let's make the heroic guess that a rational writedown of this debt to a sustainable level would see a third of it written off - which would generate $121bn (£75bn) of losses for banks outside the countries concerned.

If those loans were spread relatively evenly between banks around the world, losses on that scale would be a headache, but nothing worse.

But this tainted cookie doesn't crumble quite like that. Just under a third of the relevant exposure to public sector and banks of the three debt-challenged states, some $118bn, sits on the balance sheets of German banks, according to the BIS.

For all the formidable strength of the German economy, the balance sheets of Germany's banks are by no means the strongest in the world. German banks would not be able to shrug off $39bn or £24bn of potential losses on Portuguese, Irish and Greek loans as a matter of little consequence.

This suggests that it is in the German national interest to help Portugal, Ireland and Greece avoid default.

If you are a Greek, Portuguese or Irish citizen this might bring on something of a wry smile - because you would probably be aware that the more punitive of the bailout terms imposed by the eurozone on these countries (or about to be imposed in Portugal's case) is the expression of a German desire to spank reckless borrowers.

But as I have mentioned here before, reckless lending can be the moral (or immoral) equivalent of reckless borrowing. And German banks were not models of Lutheran prudence in that regard.

If punitive bailout terms make it more likely that Ireland, Greece or Portugal will eventually default, you might wonder whether there has been an element of masochism in the German government's negotiating position.

The SAS Stored Process Server does not create a detailed log file by default. However, you can create a detailed SAS Stored Process Server log file (that will contain information about all of the code that was executed) by using this approach. AUTO

Winnipeg police officers who arrested a man who then went into medical distress and later died were not at fault, an investigation by Manitoba's police watchdog has found.

CNA Staff, Apr 17, 2020 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- Reports of an Indian hospital's segregated wards for Hindu and Muslim coronavirus patients drew concern from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, though Indian authorities strongly disputed the allegation.

"USCIRF is concerned with reports of Hindu and Muslim patients separated into separate hospital wards in Gujarat,” the commission said on Twitter and Facebook April 15. “Such actions only help to further increase ongoing stigmatization of Muslims in India and exacerbate false rumors of Muslims spreading COVID-19.”

The bipartisan U.S. federal government commission linked to a story in the Indian Express newspaper that cites a hospital official and a patient in the city of Ahmedabad in the western coastal Indian state of Gujarat.

India's Ministry for External Affairs opposed the commission, saying it was spreading “misguided reports” and “adding religious color” that distracts from India's efforts to combat the novel coronavirus.

“No segregation is being done in civil hospitals on the basis of religion, as clarified by the Gujarat government,” the ministry said April 15.

The reports concern Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, where there are some 1,200 beds prepared for patients suffering from the novel coronavirus.

Medical Superintendent Dr. Gunvant. H. Rathod described the hospital division to the Indian Express, saying “generally, there are separate wards for male and female patients. But here, we have made separate wards for Hindu and Muslim patients.”

“It is a decision of the government and you can ask them,” he said.

Deputy Chief Minister and Health Minister Nitin Patel said he was not aware of the situation and would make inquiries. Ahmedabad's district magistrate, K.K. Nirala, also was not aware of any decision, the Indian Express reports.

However, the Indian Express cited a hospital patient who said the names of 28 men in a ward were called out, and they were moved to another ward.

“While we were not told why we were being shifted, all the names that were called out belonged to one community. We spoke to one staff member in our ward today and he said this had been done for ‘the comfort of both communities’,” the patient said.

The Gujarat Health and Family Welfare Department said the reports were “absolutely baseless.” Rather, it said, patients are treated based on symptoms and severity and “according to treating doctors' recommendations.

As of Wednesday, new known cases of coronavirus in Gujarat rose by 127 to 766, with 88 cases in Ahmedabad. The death toll there totals 33, the Times of India reports.

The Indian newspaper The Week reported that the commission had previously criticized India's Citizenship Amendment Act, which became effective in January 2020.

In December 2019 the commission expressed concern about the legislation, which enshrined a pathway to citizenship for immigrants but specifically excluded Muslims. The commission recommended U.S. sanctions on India as a possible response.

The U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom reviews alleged religious freedom violations and makes policy recommendations to the U.S. president, Secretary of State, and Congress.

The commission’s 2019 report said that religious freedom conditions in India “continued a downward trend” in 2018. It said India’s “history of religious freedom has come under attack in recent years with the growth of exclusionary extremist narratives—including, at times, the government’s allowance and encouragement of mob violence against religious minorities—that have facilitated an egregious and ongoing campaign of violence, intimidation, and harassment against non-Hindu and lower-caste Hindu minorities. Both public and private actors have engaged in this campaign.”

Mob violence against Christians by Hindus has been particularly acute.

In August 2019, six suspected members of a radical Hindu group were arrested after dozens of Catholics were attacked on a Marian pilgrimage from Karnataka to the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health in Velankanni, a coastal town in south east India.

In September, around 500 armed Hindu extremists attacked a Jesuit mission in the Archdiocese of Ranchi. Armed with sticks, chains, iron bars, knives, and pistols, the mob beat tribal students including two who were seriously injured, and also seriously damaged the school’s facilities.

Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal has said numerous mob lynchings of Christians have occurred in which the victims are accused of eating beef or otherwise harming cattle, which are considered sacred in Hinduism.

Karnataka state suffered a wave of anti-Christian violence in 2008, when Hindu extremist groups led attacks on churches, schools and homes of Christians and physically beat hundreds of people. A 2011 independent report on the violence, known as the Saldhana Report, charged that attacks were pre-planned and backed by the state’s highest government authorities.

 

The employment figures that states submit to the federal government are sometimes wildly wrong, complicating the task of responding to the nationwide shortage of special educators.

Fingerprinters collect information about the device you're accessing the internet on and attempt to build up a profile of the device.

A company whose owners fled the country with over Rs 400 crore in unpaid loans borrowed from the State Bank of India (SBI) and other banks has emerged as the latest example of a mega defaulter...

 Settlement and Default Handling Procedures in Multilateral and Deferred Net Settlement Systems under the PSS Act, 2007

The affected Skoda Superb units were manufactured between 2013-15 and the repair work will hardly take 30 minutes.

Media reports about a large shipment of Turkish-made personal protective equipment (PPE) failing quality standards upon arrival in the UK are baseless smears, Ankara has claimed. The story has caused headaches for Downing Street.
Read Full Article at RT.com

The SARFAESI Act, which is now rarely being used after the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has come into existence since 2016, allows banks to seize, take control, manage and sell assets of defaulting borrowers without the intervention of any court/tribunal and also ensures speedy recovery.

In the last Parliament session, Rahul Gandhi had asked the government to provide a list of top 50 bank loans defaulters in the country, leading to sharp exchanges and uproar in the Lok Sabha.

In a response to an RTI filed by Saket Gokhale, the central bank declined to offer names of wilful defaulters as on February 16, 2020, stating that this data is not available.

The MESTA said the government, schools and parents should work together to ensure salaries are paid, while simultaneously minimising the financial impact on parents.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) did not carry out any searches in the matter because of the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

The Food and Drug Administration prohibited 65 manufacturers from selling masks for medical use. But the move came after tests last month showed the masks didn’t meet standards.

Dear all,

I am using Conformal Constraint Designer (Version 17.1) to analyse a SystemVerilog based design.

While performing default HDL checks it finds  some violations (issues) in RTL and complains (warnings, etc) about RTL checks and others.

My questions:

Is there any directive which I can add to RTL (system Verilog) so that particular line of code or signal is ignored or not checked for HDL or RTL checks.

I can set ignore rules in rule manager (gui) but it does not seems effective if code line number changes or new signals are introduced.

What is the best way to customize default_hdl_rules ?

I will be grateful for your guidance.

Thanks for your time.

When I place a pcell and do not change the W parameter (default is used) the value is not saved in the OA cell property.

When I change the default value of the super master now, the old pcell will get the new default value automatically because there is nothing saved inside the OA cell for this parameter.

Do you have any Idea, that how we can save the default values in the OA cell properties so that this value doesn't get updated if the default values are updated in the new PDKs

Hi,

I'm doing fault injection with ncsim and got stuck at the following (and not so useful) message: "ncsim: *E,FLTIGF: [FLT] Failed to inject fault at circuit_tb.U0.n2174." I already tried with other NETs, with SET, SA0, SA1, always the same error occurs.

My scripts so far, considering I already compiled the Verilog testbench and also the gates from the technology library (gate-level simulation):

#this runs ok

ncelab -work worklib -cdslib circuit/trunk/backend/synthesis/work/cds.lib -logfile ncelab.log -errormax 15 -access +wc -status -timescale 1ps/1ps worklib.circuit_tb -fault_file circuit/trunk/backend/synthesis/scripts/fi.list

#this runs ok
ncsim -fault_good_run -fault_tw 1ns:4ns -fault_work fault_db -fault_overwrite worklib.circuit_tb:module -input ../scripts/fs_strobe.tcl -exit

#this runs NOT OK
ncsim -fault_sim_run -fault_work fault_db worklib.circuit_tb:module -input ../scripts/injection.tcl -exit

After the above command I get: "ncsim: *E,FLTIGF: [FLT] Failed to inject fault at circuit_tb.U0.n2174."

Here are the files called from the commands above.

fi.list:

fault_target circuit_tb.U0.n2174 -type SET+SA1+SA0

fs_strobe.tcl:

fs_strobe circuit_tb.WRITE_OUT circuit_tb.PC_OUT[0]

injection.tcl:

fault -stop_severity 3 -inject -time 2ns -type sa1 circuit_tb.U0.n2174

I already checked the NETs with simvision, so their paths are correct.

Any ideas?

PS: I know about Xcellium, however, I don't have it yet.

This Metasploit module abuses a known default password in IBM Data Risk Manager. The a3user has the default password idrm and allows an attacker to log in to the virtual appliance via SSH. This can be escalate to full root access, as a3user has sudo access with the default password. At the time of disclosure, this is a 0day. Versions 2.0.3 and below are confirmed to be affected, and the latest 2.0.6 is most likely affected too.

This exploit permits an attacker to bypass UAC by hijacking a registry key during computerSecurity.exe (auto elevate windows binary) execution.

KVM suffers from an uninitialized memory leak vulnerability in kvm_inject_page_fault.

XBOX 360 Aurora version 0.6b default credential FTP bruteforcing script.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has published details of the information sheets required by the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (CCA) as amended by the Consumer Credit Act 2006 for sending to borrowers in arrears and with default notices. The information ...

In recent years few, if any, lenders will have escaped the experience of borrowers challenging the enforceability of arrears administrations’ fees and regulators requesting that the level of such fees be justified, for example: credit card l...

Default retirement age to be abolished next year The Government has this morning confirmed that it plans to abolish the default retirement age (DRA) next year. The aim is that from 6 April 2011 the statutory retirement procedure in Schedule 6 of th...

The Government has today published a response to its public consultation on plans to abolish the default retirement age. Although the regulations by which this will be effected are unlikely to be published for a few weeks, the Government has confirm...

Argentina will keep pushing for talks with creditors even as a deadline for its US$ 65 billion debt restructuring proposal passed on Friday with little sign it had the support needed from international bondholders to unlock a comprehensive deal. Apparently on averaged less than 20% of bondholders accepted Argentina's conditions

Banking integration lowers bank default risk in recipient countries.

Banking integration lowers bank default risk in recipient countries.

South Africa's central bank has temporarily prohibited the use of debt issued by the Land Bank as collateral after the state agricultural lender was downgraded deeper into junk status and missed $2.7 billion in loan repayments.

Mechanical heterogeneity of a sedimentary sequence exerts a primary control on the geometry of fault zones and the proportion of offset accommodated by folding. The Wildensbuch Fault Zone in the Swiss Molasse Basin, with a maximum throw of 40 m, intersects a Mesozoic section containing a thick (120 m) clay-dominated unit (Opalinus Clay) over- and underlain by more competent limestone units. Interpretation of a 3D seismic reflection survey indicates that the fault zone formed by upward propagation of an east–west-trending basement structure, through the Mesozoic section, in response to NE–SW Miocene extension. This configuration formed an array of left-stepping normal fault segments above and below the Opalinus Clay. In cross-section a broad monoclinal fold is observed in the Opalinus Clay. Folding, however, is not ubiquitous and occurs in the Opalinus Clay where fault segments above and below are oblique to one another; where they are parallel the fault passes through the Opalinus Clay with little folding. These observations demonstrate that, even in strongly heterogeneous sequences, here a four-fold difference in both Young's modulus and cohesion between layers, the occurrence of folding may depend on the local relationship between fault geometry and applied stress field rather than rheological properties alone.

The case against them has been registered for forgery, cheating, criminal breach of trust and corruption.

In the wake of the construction disasters of the Opal Tower and Mascot Towers, the NSW Government is introducing new laws to Parliament which would mean builders have a duty of care to owners and could be fined upwards of $100,000 for any faulty work.