Dividend Chaser on Do not call registry

Dividend Chaser on USA cuts spending

(From Article)

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Airports have not ground to a halt. Fresh meat has not disappeared from supermarkets and the economy has not slipped back into recession.

The U.S. government may have headed off some of the most dire predictions about the "sequester," but over seven months, the across-the-board spending cut has thrown sand into the gears of the economic recovery.

The sequester has pulled some teachers from classrooms and police from the streets. It has grounded Air Force planes and docked Navy ships. The Forest Service had 500 fewer "hot shots" to battle summer wildfires. And as many as 140,000 low-income families may not get housing assistance that was once available.

The sequester wasn't supposed to happen. Congress set up the automatic cuts in 2011, with the burden falling equally on military and domestic programs, in an effort to force negotiators to agree on more targeted budget savings.

But they failed to find common ground over the next year and a half as Democrats protected Social Security and other benefits and Republicans rejected tax hikes.

So on March 1, automatic cuts kicked in totaling $85 billion, or roughly 2 percent of the federal $3.5 trillion budget. Social Security payments and the Medicaid health program for the poor were spared, but many other programs, from military to housing, took a 5 percent hit.

Congress eased the pain somewhat by giving agencies greater budget flexibility: the Federal Aviation Administration avoided furloughing air-traffic controllers by cancelling $247 million in construction; the Agriculture Department averted a food price spike when it kept meatpacking inspectors on the job by making other cuts; and civilian Pentagon employees, originally facing 11 unpaid days, ended up taking only six.

The Justice Department was able to keep FBI agents on the job by tapping unused funds from prior years. But cuts to its community-policing fund mean that cities like Oakland, California, now have fewer police on the streets, according to Chuck Loveless of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

If the sequester hasn't generated many sensational headlines, some economists say it is playing out largely as they predicted by slowing economic recovery and job creation.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in July that based on data up to that point, the cuts would cost 900,000 jobs within a year. Goldman Sachs said earlier this month that the federal furloughs had slowed personal income growth over the summer.

"People are looking around and saying, 'Gee, the economy hasn't imploded, life isn't so bad,'" said Stephen Fuller, an economist at George Mason University who has tracked the impact. "But they're clearly becoming more apparent, and I think we'll see this in much slower growth for the rest of the year."

MORE WASTE, FRAUD, ABUSE

Democrats and many Republicans say the sequester is bad policy but some conservatives say it has provided a welcome check on a federal government that has grown too large.

"This restraint is helping to heal our economy by reducing the debt - and deferred taxes - on future generations," Republican Senator Tom Coburn said on Friday.

In some parts of government, the sequester has prompted the kind of belt-tightening that budget hawks say will be needed to keep U.S. debt manageable. For example, it could spur the Pentagon to open up its satellite program to competition more quickly.

"It provides an impetus to go ahead and get you there faster because you have to save money," said Douglas Loverro, the Pentagon's point man on space policy.

In other areas, however, the sequester has increased wasteful spending.

Some federal courts now hire expensive private-sector lawyers to represent poor defendants because public defenders have been forced to take up to 20 unpaid days off this year.

Deferred repairs to Agriculture Department buildings in Washington that were damaged by a 2011 earthquake will cost more to fix in the future, the department says.

Government watchdogs say the sequester has hurt their ability to monitor fraud and abuse, according to a survey by the Association of Government Accountants.

And tax cheats may face less scrutiny. The Internal Revenue Service now employs 10,000 fewer people than it did two years ago and it shut down for three days this summer to save money.

"For every one dollar not invested in the IRS, the general treasury's losing four dollars," said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal workers.

The U.S. Navy says it had to mothball the USS Miami, an arson-damaged nuclear submarine, when a manpower shortage drove up repair costs. Another 11 ships have been kept in port.

Thirty-three Air Force squadrons grounded this year to save money will need to boost their flying hours by 10 percent next year to return to fighting shape.

To find immediate savings, the Pentagon has backed off on energy efficiency efforts that could bring long-term savings, according to construction-industry officials, who say some Pentagon contracts no longer ask bidders to include energy-efficient windows and other components.

"The sequester is creating a short-term solution that is going to have long-term impacts on their energy-reduction goals," said Tom Mertz, a senior vice president at Sundt Construction in Phoenix.

BACK TO SCHOOL

For schools, the impact is just now hitting home.

The sequester means 57,000 fewer poor children will participate in the Head Start preschool program this year.

That translates into 15 fewer kids, one less teacher, and one less assistant in Fremont, Nebraska, where the program already had 40 children on a waiting list.

Program director Stephanie Knust argues that those 15 Fremont kids will start kindergarten with fewer academic and social skills than their peers.

Their older siblings might also feel the impact.

"The money that's supposed to be going to help our neediest students is slowly disappearing for us," said Jeff Bisek, school district superintendent for the White Earth Indian reservation in Minnesota, where most students qualify for subsidized lunches.

Federally funded school programs for poor communities and mentally and physically handicapped children have been disproportionately hit by the sequester. The amount of federal funds to local school budgets averages 8 percent but rises to above 50 percent in some areas.

Bisek said he plugged a $250,000 shortfall this year partly by scaling back tutoring and a program for teenage mothers. He used a rainy-day fund and state aid to cover the difference.

Other schools don't have as much of a cushion.

On the Cheyenne River Indian reservation in South Dakota, class sizes have risen and struggling students are less likely to get individual help, said superintendent Carol Viet.

DROPPING OUT OF SCIENCE

As in education, cutbacks to scientific research may take years to play out.

The National Institutes of Health canceled 700 grants, and the Agriculture Department slashed 100 research projects. The Army cut its research budget by half.

Scientists worry that, aside from thwarting potential breakthroughs, the cuts could prompt young researchers to abandon the field.

University of New England professor Ian Meng said he couldn't hire assistants this summer to help him research headaches and "dry eye" syndrome. Next year, Meng may have to lay off some lab workers.

"The people I've invested in, have mentored, they certainly are seeing that research is maybe not a priority for our government," he said.

THE RENT COMES DUE

The sequester means Tamara Caston, a Houston-area school bus driver, will face a $300 a month rent increase in July or have to move to a smaller apartment with her 17-year-old son.

Faced with a $7 million federal aid cut, Houston's public-housing authority is scaling back rent support.

The extra rent equals one week's take-home pay for Caston, who says she may need a third job to cover her bills.

Across the country, many housing authorities have frozen their client lists, though few people seem to have actually been thrown out on the street. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, estimates that by next January 140,000 fewer families will receive housing help.

Housing advocates say the cuts are likely to be worse if Congress extends the sequester, as expected.

"I'm worried about the future," said Nan Roman of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. "We're getting pretty close to the bone."

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Claudia Parsons)

Dividend Chaser on torture by terrorists at Westgate mall

(From Article)

Some of the victims of the Nairobi mall massacre reportedly suffered terrible tortures at the hands of the terrorists who carried out the slaughter.

Among the reports are claims of hostage being dismembered and castrated, having their eyes gouged out, fingers cut off with pliers, and being left hanging from hooks.

"They removed balls, eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood. They drive knives inside a child's body," Kenyan newspaper The Star quoted a doctor working at the mall as saying.

"Actually if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers."

While the information could not be independently verified, The Star editor William Pike told Britain's Independent that reporters had also heard similar accounts from other sources.

The horrifying claims about the Somalian al-Shabaab terrorists came amid mounting public anger at the lack of information from authorities about the massacre.

It was unclear how many people died after terrorists armed with machine guns and grenades started the killing in the mall around lunchtime on Saturday.

Some reports put the number of dead, excluding terrorists, at 67, with the Red Cross saying a further 71 people were listed as still missing.

Unverified accounts in Nairobi suggested the military had been forced to blow up part of the mall both to bring the massacre to an end and to end the appalling suffering of hostages.

The Daily Mail reported accounts of children being found dead in food court fridges with knives still in their bodies.

According to some accounts, most of the defeated terrorists were discovered burnt to ashes, after being set alight by the last of their number still alive to try to protect their identities.

During the assault by government troops on Monday to retake the mall, hostages reportedly had their throats slashed from ear to ear and were thrown screaming from third-floor balconies.

Between 10 and 15 terrorists were thought to have carried out the killings, with police saying five of the extremists had been killed and at least 10 taken into custody.

It could be up to a week before the mall can be thoroughly searched because of fears of setting off explosives.

SHOCKING IMAGES

Devastating images of the Kenyan mall carnage and tales of the terror shoppers encountered therein are emerging as authorities work hard to bring to justice those responsible for planning the attack that killed at least 67 people.

The Kenyan Presidential Press Service distributed photos showing blasted-out cars dangling from the wreckage of a collapsed carpark. 

In one photo two baby strollers are seen at a cafe table, perhaps a metre from a gaping pit filled with charred vehicles.

But more terrifying than any images of a demolished car park are the stories coming from survivors.

Tales of how one Muslim women huddled in a crawl space with seven strangers tried to teach them a Muslim chant, so they might be spared.

How a woman smeared her body with blood from the corpse of a teenage boy so she'd appear to be already among the dead.

How the gunmen fired indiscriminately into the crowd, and corpses piled upon corpses.

These are their stories.

___

Saturdays are crowded at the Westgate Mall, Nairobi's most elite retail destination and a crossroads of the global economy. Rich foreign businessmen go there, as do wealthy Kenyans. There are shopping diplomats, and aid workers watching movies. They stroll the Nakumatt grocery store and have sandwiches at Java House. They buy sunglasses, silk shirts and phones.

Much of Kenya lives on less than a couple of dollars a day, but these poor also come to Westgate. They work inside, carrying boxes at the supermarket, sweeping the marble floors. Or they just come to watch.

"Poor. Rich. High class. All of them are there," says Rafia Khan, whose husband is a wealthy businessman.

On this Saturday, though, they would watch children weep and watch them die. They would leave injured friends behind as they fled the attackers. They would be shot, and hit by shrapnel from grenades. At least 67 would die in what became a four-day siege by extremists from al-Shabab, the Somalia-based, Muslim militant group.

__

The Westgate Mall entrance, about 12:36 p.m.:

Kenyan authorities believe there are as few as six gunmen, although the numbers remain unclear. The first team, wearing bulletproof vests, storms Westgate's front entrance, throwing grenades and firing assault rifles as they run. They are clearly well-trained.

Few people inside the mall think of terrorism when they hear the first explosion, and many think it's an electrical box giving way under Nairobi's unreliable power grid. But as one blast gives way to another and the clatter of machine-gun fire is heard, thousands of people know they need to move. But where?

Outside at the entrance, Ben Mulwa, a community organiser driving to the mall for lunch, jumps from his car and takes shelter in a shallow flowerbed. He also thinks it's a bank robbery. An unarmed mall security guard takes cover next to him.

Then he sees four attackers in the driveway, racing in his direction. All carry rifles.

"I realised this is bigger trouble than I actually thought," he says.

Mulwa hears a bang, and the guard next to him is shot through the head. He never moves again.

"That's when I saw the second gunmen actually pointing his rifle at me," he says later. Three shots ring out. In his mind, he sees his 1-year-old daughter. "I asked God: Why would you want my daughter to go through this?"

___

Al-Shabab once controlled wide swaths of Somalia, bringing with it a harsh version of Islam that required punishments such as stoning adulterers to death. The group has been threatening revenge on Kenya since 2011, when Kenyan soldiers crossed into Somalia and helped hobble the al Qaeda-linked militants.

The group said in an emailed statement after the attack that "any part of the Kenyan territory is a legitimate target. ... Kenya should be held responsible for the loss of life."

Authorities believe the group had planned long in advance, scouting the mall carefully.

"They likely had cased the location for some time and knew very well the best place and time to attack," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The gunmen, for the most part, are dressed casually. Many are in khakis and long-sleeved shirts. Some have checked scarves around their necks or flung over their heads. Only some are wearing bulletproof vests.

Most carry AK-47 or G3 assault rifles, weapons widely used in the region and easily available on the black market.

It was unclear how many people died after terrorists armed with machine guns and grenades started the killing in the mall around lunchtime on Saturday.

Some reports put the number of dead, excluding terrorists, at 67, with the Red Cross saying a further 71 people were listed as still missing.

Unverified accounts in Nairobi suggested the military had been forced to blow up part of the mall both to bring the massacre to an end and to end the appalling suffering of hostages.

The Daily Mail reported accounts of children being found dead in food court fridges with knives still in their bodies.

According to some accounts, most of the defeated terrorists were discovered burnt to ashes, after being set alight by the last of their number still alive to try to protect their identities.

During the assault by government troops on Monday to retake the mall, hostages reportedly had their throats slashed from ear to ear and were thrown screaming from third-floor balconies.

Between 10 and 15 terrorists were thought to have carried out the killings, with police saying five of the extremists had been killed and at least 10 taken into custody.

It could be up to a week before the mall can be thoroughly searched because of fears of setting off explosives.

SHOCKING IMAGES

Devastating images of the Kenyan mall carnage and tales of the terror shoppers encountered therein are emerging as authorities work hard to bring to justice those responsible for planning the attack that killed at least 67 people.

The Kenyan Presidential Press Service distributed photos showing blasted-out cars dangling from the wreckage of a collapsed carpark. 

In one photo two baby strollers are seen at a cafe table, perhaps a metre from a gaping pit filled with charred vehicles.

But more terrifying than any images of a demolished car park are the stories coming from survivors.

Tales of how one Muslim women huddled in a crawl space with seven strangers tried to teach them a Muslim chant, so they might be spared.

How a woman smeared her body with blood from the corpse of a teenage boy so she'd appear to be already among the dead.

How the gunmen fired indiscriminately into the crowd, and corpses piled upon corpses.

These are their stories.

___

Saturdays are crowded at the Westgate Mall, Nairobi's most elite retail destination and a crossroads of the global economy. Rich foreign businessmen go there, as do wealthy Kenyans. There are shopping diplomats, and aid workers watching movies. They stroll the Nakumatt grocery store and have sandwiches at Java House. They buy sunglasses, silk shirts and phones.

Much of Kenya lives on less than a couple of dollars a day, but these poor also come to Westgate. They work inside, carrying boxes at the supermarket, sweeping the marble floors. Or they just come to watch.

"Poor. Rich. High class. All of them are there," says Rafia Khan, whose husband is a wealthy businessman.

On this Saturday, though, they would watch children weep and watch them die. They would leave injured friends behind as they fled the attackers. They would be shot, and hit by shrapnel from grenades. At least 67 would die in what became a four-day siege by extremists from al-Shabab, the Somalia-based, Muslim militant group.

__

The Westgate Mall entrance, about 12:36 p.m.:

Kenyan authorities believe there are as few as six gunmen, although the numbers remain unclear. The first team, wearing bulletproof vests, storms Westgate's front entrance, throwing grenades and firing assault rifles as they run. They are clearly well-trained.

Few people inside the mall think of terrorism when they hear the first explosion, and many think it's an electrical box giving way under Nairobi's unreliable power grid. But as one blast gives way to another and the clatter of machine-gun fire is heard, thousands of people know they need to move. But where?

Outside at the entrance, Ben Mulwa, a community organiser driving to the mall for lunch, jumps from his car and takes shelter in a shallow flowerbed. He also thinks it's a bank robbery. An unarmed mall security guard takes cover next to him.

Then he sees four attackers in the driveway, racing in his direction. All carry rifles.

"I realised this is bigger trouble than I actually thought," he says.

Mulwa hears a bang, and the guard next to him is shot through the head. He never moves again.

"That's when I saw the second gunmen actually pointing his rifle at me," he says later. Three shots ring out. In his mind, he sees his 1-year-old daughter. "I asked God: Why would you want my daughter to go through this?"

___

Al-Shabab once controlled wide swaths of Somalia, bringing with it a harsh version of Islam that required punishments such as stoning adulterers to death. The group has been threatening revenge on Kenya since 2011, when Kenyan soldiers crossed into Somalia and helped hobble the al Qaeda-linked militants.

The group said in an emailed statement after the attack that "any part of the Kenyan territory is a legitimate target. ... Kenya should be held responsible for the loss of life."

Authorities believe the group had planned long in advance, scouting the mall carefully.

"They likely had cased the location for some time and knew very well the best place and time to attack," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The gunmen, for the most part, are dressed casually. Many are in khakis and long-sleeved shirts. Some have checked scarves around their necks or flung over their heads. Only some are wearing bulletproof vests.

Most carry AK-47 or G3 assault rifles, weapons widely used in the region and easily available on the black market.

But some of the gunmen are draped with belts of large-calibre ammunition, and witnesses hear the fast, frightening, echoing blasts of heavy machine-gun fire.

As they storm through the mall, the music system keeps playing, an undertone to the explosions and screams. The music of Adele and Ne-Yo filters through the carnage.

___

Millionaires Casino, 12:57 p.m.:

Khan is huddled in a ceiling-level crawl space with nine other people. Her daughter is texting her.

"Are you okay???"

"Mum??"

"Can u message us Mum???" 

___

Millionaires Casino, 1:30 p.m.:

Word has spread that the gunmen are allowing Muslims to leave — testing them by asking about their knowledge of Islam.

Khan and her cousin are the only Muslims among the small group. They decide to teach the others to recite the Shahada, the short Arabic-language creed that proclaims there is only one God and Muhammed is his prophet.

Over and over, Khan whispers the words slowly and phonetically, as if to a child: "La il-a-ha il-Al-lah wa Mu-ham-mad ru-soul Al-lah."

___

Parking area, third-level rooftop, about 1:30 p.m.:

The young mother watches the gunman shoot. Crowds of people are stumbling, screaming, falling around her.

He is calm.

She is terrified.

Sneha Kothari-Mashru, 28 and a part-time radio DJ, watches through a tangle of her long brown hair, which she has thrown across her face to appear as if she is already among the dead. She has smeared blood onto her arm and her clothes, taking it from the corpse of a teenage boy. She has kicked off her blue high heels.

The gunman doesn't scream, she recalls days later. He rarely speaks. There is no obvious anger in his expression. He seems confident, she says. "He was normal."

About 15 minutes later, Kothari-Mashru watches as the gunman speaks quietly to one family. She can't hear what is said, but the wife is dressed in the billowing robes worn by highly observant Muslim women. Slowly, the family members stand, raise their hands above their heads, and walk away.

Other witnesses described similar scenes. Elijah Kamau, who was at the mall at the time of the midday attack, said he listened as militants told one group of their plans.

"The gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave. They were safe," he said.

In the email statement, al-Shabab said their fighters "carried out a meticulous vetting process at the mall and have taken every possible precaution to separate the Muslims from the Kuffar (disbelievers) before carrying out their attack".

___

This is not the rule, however, in the attack.

Dozens of Muslims are shot, and many are killed. Most often, the gunmen fire wildly, spraying bullets into crowds and not bothering to ask about religion.

Some of the bloodiest scenes occur just a few feet from where Kothari-Mashru pretends to be dead.

A Junior Super Chef cooking competition was being held in the parking area and dozens of people — many from Kenya's community of Ismaili Muslims — were at long tables set up beneath car advertisements.

Gunmen had already fired through the crowds at the competition when Kothari-Mashru hides nearby. Afterward, the tables are still arranged in many places, complete with upholstered chairs and red tablecloths. But puddles of blood are everywhere, with corpses one on top of another.

___

Parking area, third-level rooftop, about 3 p.m.:

Word goes out that someone has found a place to hide.

Kothari-Mashru decides to run. As she leaves, though, she sees a friend she had met that day, lying down, obviously wounded.

"Can you get up?" Kothari-Mashru asks.

Her friend has been shot three times. She smiles at Kothari-Mashru, but says she cannot move.

As the crowds swarm toward what seems to be safety, Kothari-Mashru leaves.

"It was heartbreaking," she says later.

She swallows.

"I don't know. I don't know," she says. "She couldn't get up. She couldn't move. She just lay there."

Soon, Kothari-Mashru is among dozens of people on a back staircase heading to safety. As she races down, she runs into her husband, who had convinced two plain-clothed policemen to help find her. Later, Kothari-Mashru's friend was rescued and treated at a hospital.

___

Millionaires Casino, about 4 p.m.:

Police bang on the door of the casino. The 10 people hiding in the crawl space are escorted out by security forces. They were never forced to recite the creed.

___

Westgate Mall, about 6:30 p.m.:

Dozens, perhaps more than 100 people, remain scattered thorugh the mall as the sun sets. Bodies are carried out as security forces push the gunmen into ever smaller areas.

Mulwa, who had taken cover in the flowerbed and was shot in the leg, has already been taken to safety by police and hospitalized. After surgery, he is released from the hospital.

The siege does not end until Tuesday night, at the end of fierce gunbattles, a fire and the collapse of part of the structure.

Among the dead is Kofi Awoonor of Ghana, a beloved 78-year-old poet who was in Nairobi for a literary festival. His body was flown Wednesday to Accra, the capital of his homeland, where hundreds gathered at the airport to remember him as a man of peace.

In one verse, he was clearly conscious of his own mortality.

"When the final night falls on us

"As it fell upon our parents,

"We shall retire to our modest home

"Earth-sure, secure

"That we have done our duty

"By our people;

"We met the challenge of history

"And were not afraid."

- AP

Dividend Chaser on HPH trust securing bank loan

(From Article)

HONG KONG--Billionaire Li Ka-shing's Hutchison Port Holdings Trust (HCTPF) has secured a US$3.6 billion refinancing loan, according to people familiar with the matter.

The loan has three tranches, comprising a US$1 billion one-year loan, a US$1.6 billion three-year loan and a US$1 billion five-year loan.

The one-year tranche offers an interest rate of 0.6% over the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, while the three-year tranche offers 1.1% over Libor and the five-year tranche offers 1.4% over Libor, one of the people said.

The deal drew a strong response, with 17 banks participating, including Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. Ltd., DBS Bank and Bank of China Ltd., one of the people said. Each bank lent US$211.7 million, the person added.

The signing of the loan, which will be used to refinance the firm's existing debt, took place Monday.

Hutchison Port Holdings declined to comment.

Dividend Chaser on Fairprice dividend and rebate

(Personal Sharing)

I just received a post from Fairprice on the dividend and rebate for year 2013.

This year with purchases of 2611.32, I was entitled to rebate of 4.5% and it was equivalent to 117.50. The 20 shares I owned gave me dividend of 0.90.

The total amount of 118.40 adequately covered my union fees of 96 per year.

Dividend Chaser on Second Chance profit alert

(From Article)

The Board of Directors (the “Board”) of Second Chance Properties Ltd (the “Company” and together with its subsidiaries the “Group”) wishes to release the following announcement in conjunction with the full year unaudited results of the Group for the financial year ended 31 August 2013 (“FY 2013”) to be released on 30 October 2013.

Profit Alert

The valuations of the Group’s properties for FY 2013 as at 31 August 2013 carried out by Jones Lang LaSalle, indicate a substantial increase in value compared with the previous year which is in tandem with the rising commercial real estate market.

This will also result in a considerable increase in record net profit for FY 2013. 

Dividend Chaser on Shooting at Kenyan Westgate Mall

(From Article)

NAIROBI

Kenyan troops backed by Israeli forces battled yesterday to end a siege in an upmarket shopping mall and free hostages held by Somali militants.

Sporadic gunfire could be heard as Kenyan security officials said they were attempting to kill or capture the remaining attackers and end the 26-hour-long bloodbath at the Westgate mall.

"The Israelis have just entered and they are rescuing the hostages and the injured," a Kenyan security source said. The Israeli Foreign Ministry refused to confirm or deny that its forces were involved.

Somalia's Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab rebels said the carnage at the part-Israeli-owned complex was in retaliation for Kenya's military intervention in Somalia, where African Union troops are battling the Islamists.

Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said 59 people were confirmed dead, while the Red Cross has estimated the number of injured at 200.

Mr Lenku said there were still between 10 and 15 gunmen in the shopping centre.

"We believe there are some innocent people in the building, that is why the operation is delicate."

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta had said in a televised address to the nation late on Saturday that he had lost family members in the attack.

"Let me make it clear. We shall hunt down the perpetrators wherever they run to. We shall get them. We shall punish them for this heinous crime," he vowed.

The Westgate mall is popular with wealthy Kenyans and expatriates, and was packed with around 1,000 shoppers when the gunmen marched in at midday on Saturday, tossed grenades and sprayed automatic gunfire at terrified people.

One teenage survivor recounted how he played dead to avoid being killed.

"I heard screams and gunshots all over the place. I got scared. I tried to run down the stairs and saw someone running towards the top, I ran back and hid behind one of the cars," said 18-year-old Umar Ahmed.

In the hours after the attack began, shocked people of all ages and races could be seen running from the mall, some clutching babies, while others crawled along walls to avoid stray bullets.

A number of foreigners were killed, including two French citizens, two Canadians, three Britons, a Chinese woman, two Indians and a South Korean. The United States said its citizens were reportedly among those injured.--AFP

Dividend Chaser on ISO7.0 prohibiting cloned lightning cable for iPhone

(From Article)

Back in June, we discovered Apple implemented a warning in iOS 7 Beta builds to caution people against using non-certified Lightning cables, many of which contain cracked authentication chips.

Specifically, connecting an accessory to an iOS 7 Beta device through a non-certified Lightning cable produced a prompt saying“This cable or accessory is not certified and may not work reliably with this iPhone”.

It seems the company has thrown down the gauntlet to unauthorized accessory makers over the use of unapproved Lightning cables because folks have confirmed that the shipping version of iOS 7 now in fact blocks such cables, preventing them from actually charging your iPhone…

According to an ongoing thread over atReddit, though some non-certified cables are still working, many do not. Other peoplehave confirmed this as well.

I have a cable which worked perfectly fine on iOS 6.1.4. But now on iOS 7, it will not charge the phone whether using the mains adapter or via USB.

One commenter added:

Yes I get the “cable not certified” message everytime, but until recently my cheap cables worked fine. I plugged one in to my work computer to charge and was greeted with a new message, asking if I “trusted this computer.”

So everytime I plugged my phone in I had to dismiss the “certified” message and accept the “trusted” prompt. After a few times, the cable stopped working. Used another cheap cable, same thing happened.

Previously, iOS 7 Betas only put up a warning when using a knockoff cable.

There seems to be a workaround solution:

1. Turn on USB power
2. Plug in lightning cable to iPhone
3. Dismiss any warnings
4. Unlock your iPhone.
5. Dismiss any remaining warnings.
6. Now with the screen turned on.
7. Unplug the knock off lightning cable.
8. Plug it back in.
9. Dismiss warning again
10. It should now charge

The somewhat complex and annoying workaround could push some people to consider buying certified accessories which are often priced at a premium due to licensing fees paid to Apple and the use of Lightning authentication chips found in both the cables and connectors.

Dividend Chaser on Typhoon Usagi

(From Article)

HENGTSUN, Taiwan (AFP) - Typhoon Usagi, the most powerful storm of the year, unleashed torrential rain and ferocious winds on Taiwan on Saturday, leaving tens of thousands without power after claiming at least two lives in the Philippines as it barrelled towards Hong Kong.

Southern Taiwan was hit by the storm, which brought torrential rain and ferocious winds, as it rolled past the Batanes island group in the far north of the Philippines - tearing coconut trees in half - and headed on towards the Chinese mainland.

At 1800 GMT Severe Typhoon Usagi was estimated to be 500km south-east of Hong Kong, forcing local carrier Cathay Pacific to warn that all its flights in and out of the city will be cancelled from 6pm on Sunday.

Usagi reached maximum sustained winds of up to 195kmh, the Hong Kong Observatory said, as people in the city reinforced windows in anticipation of the approaching storm's impact.

Dividend Chaser on HPH dividend payout

(Personal Sharing)

Hph dividend payout - 30.75SGD per lot on payable 19Sep.

Dividend Chaser on Fed will continue monthly bond purchases

(From Article)

U.S. Federal Reserve defied market expectations on Wednesday by postponing a wind-down of its massive monetary stimulus, saying it would wait for more evidence of solid economic growth. The Fed will continue, for now, with its $85-billion monthly bond purchases which have propped up economic growth and equity markets for much of the year.

Dividend Chaser on Correction, Pull back, consolidation, dip

(From Article)

Correction Stocks move in trends. A stock rises in a series of higher highs and higher lows. At some point it reverses and turns down. A downward trend is, in turn, characterized by a series of lower highs and lower lows. Once you see a stock make a lower low after failing to make a higher high - beware, you are in a danger zone! If you own the stock, sell, if not, don't touch it, you never know how low it will go. And NEVER average down by adding to a losing position.

Consolidation No stock rises forever or in a straight line. The advance resembles a staircase: a run-up, a pause or a retracement. When a stocks stops advancing and starts trading in a narrow (or narrowing) price range, it's consolidating its gains. Don't rush in to buy - you never know how long a consolidation will last. The best time to buy is when a stock breaks out of consolidation to the upside.

Pullback
A stock advances rapidly, then stops and turns back down, giving back 20 - 40% of the gain. There are different schools of thought as to when's the best time to buy on a pullback. Some try to buy at the bottom of the retracement, hoping for the lowest price. Others want to see the stock turn back up again. There is no one best way. The risk here is that a pullback can always turn into a correction. The key is for the stock to not make a lower low before turning back up.

Dip
Many volatile stocks fluctuate a lot even during an advance. Trying to catch the bottom of the current price range is buying on a dip. There are many causes for dips - a large sell order, a shakeout, specialists/MMs clearing out stops - you will never know, but the key is that the price usually comes back up on the same day or within a couple of days. Buying on dips is generally safe in a strong market. Otherwise a dip may become a pullback, which in turn may deteriorate into a correction.

Dividend Chaser on Story of 'J' from India

(From Article)

NEW DELHI — One of the most striking elements of the Delhi gang-rape case is the similarity in the backgrounds of the victim and her killers.

The family of “J” — it is illegal under Indian law to name a rape victim — were, like those of her assailants, from close to the bottom of India’s still tenacious caste hierarchy. Her father, Mr Badri Nath, like the Singh brothers’ father, had in 1982 left his remote ancestral village for the capital in search of a better life. Three years later, his wife, who married when she was only 15, came to join him in Delhi.

Mr Badri Nath started out polishing pressure cookers, then, eventually, found work as a loader at Delhi’s airport. He worked two eight-hour shifts, each one earning 100 rupees (S$1.99). He left home at 1pm and got home at 6am. “I heard once that, to escape poverty, you need to work like a horse and live like a saint,” Mr Badri Nath said later. “That is what I have tried to do all my life.”

His first child was a boy who died after three days. “My wife was so sad that when we had another child, we did not care if it was a boy or a girl,” he said. The child was J, and she was followed over eight years by two boys.

All three children went to the local school, but it was J who stood out. “She just needed to look at something once and she remembered it,” said Mr Badri Nath. Her textbooks lined a wall in the small home. To give her space to study and sleep, the rest of the family ate and slept in the second bedroom, covering a bed with a plastic sheet to convert it into a dining table.

“The only thing that interested her was studies,” her father remembered.

She had wanted to be a doctor — ideally, a neurosurgeon — but opted instead for the more modest, and more affordable, ambition of physiotherapist, and found a college in the northern city of Dehradun, where she could qualify after a four-year course.

To raise the 40,000-rupee annual fee, her father sold part of his land in his village and mortgaged the rest. To cover living expenses — a similar sum — J found a job in a call centre in the city, where she met Mr Awindra Pandey, a 28-year-old information technology specialist. The two were “just friends”, J’s father said. He liked the young man, but there was no question of the pair marrying, as they came from different sides of what, in India, remains an unbridgeable gulf.

Mr Pandey’s family were from the upper castes, his father was a wealthy lawyer. But if there would never have been a match, there could at least be companionship. The couple had been seeing each other for over a year.

They had not seen each other for more than month, however, before the attack. It was J, back in Delhi to look for an internship as a physiotherapist, who called her friend to suggest a trip to the cinema. They went to Saket Mall, a shopping centre in Delhi, where they watched Life of Pi at a multiplex. They left at about 8.30pm and started looking for transport home.

Delhi’s public transport is grossly inadequate at the best of times. Unlicensed buses are allowed to run, after paying a small bribe to avoid a fine.

That night, there were no official Delhi Metropolitan Corporation buses to take J and Mr Pandey to Dwarka. The couple took an auto-rickshaw from the mall to another bus stop, at Munirka, where they hoped to find more options to get back to Dwarka.

The couple had been waiting only a few minutes when the bus driven by Mukesh Singh pulled up. The couple got in and one of the four men, Akshay Thakur, took 20 rupees as a fare from the couple. The bus moved off.

Within minutes, as the bus drove along Delhi’s outer ring road in the direction of the international airport, the atmosphere darkened.

“What are you doing out roaming around with a girl on her own?” Ram Singh asked Mr Pandey.

“None of your business,” the young man answered. The two men faced off. Ram threw a punch. Then events moved very fast. Ram and the others wrestled Mr Pandey to the floor. Blows rained down on the helpless man.

As Mukesh drove the bus through heavy traffic, Thakur and Ram had dragged the woman to its back seats, according to the men’s statements to police after their arrest. “They beat her and pressed a hand over her mouth and tore her clothes off,” the juvenile’s statement said. “Ram Singh first raped her, the girl kept shouting and, one by one, all of us (raped her).”

The vehicle passed through three police checkpoints, where officers from the city’s overstretched, badly paid and badly equipped force stood supposedly keeping an eye on traffic. As the bus headed back into the city, the attack continued.

At exactly 9.54pm, according to images recorded by cameras, the bus reached Mahipalpur. The men pushed the couple out through the front doors. An attempt appears to have been made to run them over, but Mr Pandey, though badly injured, was able to drag J out of the way.

For 40 minutes after their attackers had driven away, J and her friend lay on a narrow strip of wasteland beside a slip road of the highway. Lying in the gravel, bleeding heavily, they were nonetheless visible to the traffic streaming past. Vehicles slowed, almost stopped, and then accelerated away, Mr Pandey later remembered.

It is common knowledge that Delhi had a problem with sexual violence, and anecdotal evidence is backed up by statistics. According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, registered rape cases in the country had increased by almost 900 per cent over the past 40 years, to 24,206 incidents in 2011. Delhi, with its population of 15 million, registered 572 cases of rape, compared with 239 in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, with its bigger population, in 2011. There were just 47 reported in Kolkata.

Only two months before the Delhi attack, a spate of rapes and gang rapes in Haryana prompted some debate in the media. Local politicians attributed the wave of attacks to women behaving immodestly.

But J’s case was exceptional. The attack was of almost unprecedented brutality. J was out with a friend watching a film. She was not in a village, nor was she working in a nightclub. She was thus seen as representative in a way that other victims, rightly or wrongly, had never been.

On Dec 25, having held on to consciousness for long enough to twice give a crucial statement to investigators, J, still in Safdarjung hospital in the south of Delhi, began to lose her grip on life.

Mr Badri Nath said: “During the evening, maybe 9pm, she saw me standing outside the intensive care unit. She asked me if I had eaten. I said ‘yes’. Then, she said, ‘Dad, go to sleep, you must be tired.’ I patted her head.

“She said, ‘You should get some sleep.’ She took my hand and kissed it. She never opened her eyes again.”

Four days later, J died in a hospital in Singapore, where she had been moved as no facilities for treatment that would give her a chance of life existed in India. Her body was brought back to India, cremated in Dwarka and then, as is traditional, her ashes were carried by her family to the banks of the Ganges, near the village that Mr Badri Nath had left 30 years before, and scattered on the river.

In Delhi itself, though a city full of temples, mosques and churches, scores gathered at an impromptu shrine set up at the bus stop where J had waited for a lift home 13 days before. “We are feeling very sad. We are feeling very angry. Now, we hope our lives will change,” said Ms Archana Balodi, a 24-year-old student. One poster read: “She is not dead, she has just gone to a place where there is no rape.”

Eight months later, at the conclusion of the trial of her killers, it is difficult to argue that J’s ordeal and death has made much difference in India, at least so far: The rapes and sexual assaults that are now highlighted daily by the Indian media act simply as a reminder of how widespread violence to women is in the country.

The fierce debate between conservatives who blamed westernisation against liberals blaming reactionary sexist and patriarchal attitudes has faded. A package of laws increasing punishments for sexual assault and redefining a range of offences may do some good, campaigners concede, if enforcement is simultaneously improved, but dozens of men accused of rape remain members of local and national parliamentary assemblies.

The special funding released by the government for measures to enhance the security of women has so far gone unspent. Few are confident that gender training for the underfunded police will have much effect.

Nor are the new “fast-track courts” — such as the one, only a few hundred metres from the mall where J and Pandey watched Life of Pi, where her attackers were tried — solving the problems of the criminal justice system.

Dividend Chaser on SPH as an investment

(From Article)

SPH is a good investment for income and it is a stock that can be accumulated on weakness. If share price should retreat to $3.60 a share, a DPS of 21c to 24c would mean a dividend yield of some 5.83% to 6.67%. Pretty decent.

So, in conclusion, if you are looking for growth catalyst in SPH, and hence higher dividend yield, don’t get your hopes too high.

Buying SPH will be buying into a stalwart, with a yield of between 5-6%, which is unlikely to see downward revision anytime soon, is not too bad a deal.

Peter Lynch classified stocks into 5 categories. "Stalwarts" are "big companies which are not likely to go out of business. The key issue is price, and the PER will tell you whether you are paying too much. If you plan to hold the stock forever, see how the company has fared during previous recessions and market drops." 

Dividend Chaser on Sabana 40 million private placement new units

(From Article)

CLOSE OF PRIVATE PLACEMENT OF 40,000,000 NEW UNITS 

IN SABANA SHARI?AH COMPLIANT INDUSTRIAL REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST

AT AN ISSUE PRICE OF S$1.00 PER NEW UNITS.

Dividend Chaser on September 2013 stock portfolio

(Personal Sharing)

I have the following stock portfolio for September 2013.

1. 3000 sabana

2. 20,000 rickmers

3. 1000 SPH

4. 1000 transpac 

5. 10,000 HPH

Dividend Chaser on first love rules

Dividend Chaser on HPH target price at 0.76USD

(From Article)

Safe harbour

• Strong cash flows from high quality ports
  
• Attractive distribution yield of 7%
  
• Initiate with BUY, US$0.76 target price
  

Market leader in the Pearl River Delta

Hutchison Port Holdings Trust (HPH Trust) is the biggest container port operator in China’s Pearl River Delta region by throughput, with market shares of around 70% at Hong Kong’s main Kwai Tsing Port and 47% in Shenzhen. The business trust enjoys the backing of sponsor Hutchison Port Holdings, one of the world’s biggest port operators and a subsidiary of HK-listed conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, headed by billionaire Li Ka-shing.

Well-placed to ride rebound in world trade

HPH Trust owns interests in four deep-water container port assets – three at Hong Kong’s main Kwai Tsing Port and one in Shenzhen – with a combined throughput of some 22.9m TEU in 2012. We believe that its market dominance in the Pearl River Delta puts the trust in a strong position to capture the region’s trade flows of manufacturing exports and raw material imports, including intra-Asia cargo. HPH Trust is also likely to be a key beneficiary of the trend by shipping companies to deploy bigger vessels as they strive for greater economies of scale; its container terminals are situated in harbours with natural deep water approaches and are equipped with advanced equipment capable of serving even the world’s biggest vessels. Overall, we believe that HPH Trust is wellplaced to benefit from a rebound in international trade as the US and Europe economies recover, as well as continued growth in intra-Asia trade.

Recent price drop offers good entry point, decent upside

HPH Trust’s unit price has declined by 16% from its recent peak of US$0.86 on 2 Apr, hurt by concerns over the impact of strikes by port workers in Hong Kong in April and in Shenzhen earlier this week (both since resolved), and the weakness in the global economy. At the current price of US$0.725, we believe that the trust offers upside potential, including distributions, of more than 10% over the next 12 months as the recovery in the US and Europe gathers momentum. The main risk to our investment thesis in the short term is a renewed slowdown in these major economies. Still, we expect strong support for HPH Trust at its current price, given its attractive distribution yield of around 7%. Initiate with a BUY rating and US$0.76 target price.