Thursday, September 24, 2009

“UN marks 60th year of helping Palestinian refugees - Modesto Bee” plus 4 more

“UN marks 60th year of helping Palestinian refugees - Modesto Bee” plus 4 more


UN marks 60th year of helping Palestinian refugees - Modesto Bee

Posted: 24 Sep 2009 08:02 AM PDT

The agency's resources were particularly burdened by Israel's bruising winter offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers. Since the Gaza war, UNRWA has expanded food distribution, and now provides services to nearly 1 million of the territory's 1.4 million residents.

The Palestinians make up the world's largest refugee group, and their plight has gone on longer than any other, UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen Abu Zayd noted at Thursday's ceremony.

She urged the international community "to furnish the levels of financial and political support UNRWA requires to serve the Palestinian refugees better."

UNRWA is faced by a serious deficit "that threatens its ability to continue delivering services," she said.

Abu Zayd asked for greater efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and with that, the plight of the refugees. "The protracted exile of Palestine refugees and the dire conditions they endure, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territory, cannot be reconciled with state obligations under the U.N. charter," she said.

Queen Rania, the wife of Jordan's monarch, King Abdullah II, said she wished the agency was no longer necessary.

"I wished there was no anniversary to mark," she said. "But you and I know the reality is very different. Theirs (the refugees') life is very different. Theirs' is a life interrupted, a life half lived. Hours wasted at checkpoints, another work day lost, another pay check canceled, worried about what the family will eat ... praying for an aid parcel."



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Banks forced to hold more capital won’t cut loans, report says - Daily Business Review

Posted: 24 Sep 2009 07:40 AM PDT



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TASE -- The Week in Review, Sept. 21-24, 2009 - PR Inside

Posted: 24 Sep 2009 07:40 AM PDT

2009-09-24 16:44:04 -

The rally on the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) continued during the fourth week of September with gains all leading share price indices.

The TA-25 index advanced some 2.5% this week, culminating in a 52% ascent since the beginning of the year. The TA-75 increased 2%, consolidating a 121% year-to-date return. This stellar performance stems from the sharp increase in prices early

in the year of shares of companies involved in the discovery of gas in two sites off Israel's Mediterranean shore.

The financial services sector stood out with average weekly returns of 4.5%, while the Tel-tech 15 index and large real estate shares gained 2.5% and 0.5% respectively on average.

The Minister of Finance announced that the government is preparing to sell its remaining holdings in Bank Leumi (which come to 11.5% valued at US $ 0.6 billion) and Bank Discount (some 25%, valued at U.S. $0.5 billion) to the public through the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in the coming months. Both banks are included in the TA-25 share price index.

The Bank of Israel's Composite State-of-the-Economy index rose 1.3% in August, completing an increase of 3% for the June-August period and reversing the downward trend, which started in August 2008.

About TASE:


Established in September 1935, the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange is Israel's sole stock exchange, offering an increasingly sophisticated range of products to investors, including equity, corporate bonds, treasury bills and notes, index products and derivatives. The Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange features 637 companies listing equities, 342 index-tracking products, 40 series of government bonds, 547 series of corporate bonds and 1048 mutual funds. As of April 2009, the exchange's market capitalization in equities was over £100 billion. In recent years, the exchange has enhanced its international presence, signing Memorandums of Understanding with the London Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, the Shanghai Stock Exchange and NYSE-Euronext.

Visit the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's Website www.tase.co.il :

GraylingAlistair Scott or Jonathan Shillington, 020-7255-1100orTASEIdit
Yaaron or Orna Goren, 972-3-5677564/405



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U.S. Department of Treasury Selects EDS, an HP Company, for $30 ... - WebWire

Posted: 24 Sep 2009 08:09 AM PDT

EDS, an HP company, today announced it has signed a $30 million agreement with the U.S. Department of Treasurys Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to improve the connectivity, collaboration, performance and overall user experience for the agencys workforce by providing and maintaining end-user computing resources as well as mobility services.

Under the agreement, EDS will provide comprehensive workplace services support, deploy HP desktops, workstations, notebooks, wireless products, portable printers and scanners to help OCC meet the objectives of the Integrated Mobile Employee Technology Refresh and Optimization (I-METRO) program.

EDS solution will consolidate the number of desktops and help meet the needs of OCC employees by providing innovative HP mobility solutions tailored to improve productivity, simplify remote access and reduce support costs. The solution also offers nationwide connectivity and availability of the agencys mission-critical applications 24/7, while supporting compliance with all applicable federal policies and regulations.

OCC charters, regulates and supervises national banks to ensure a safe, sound and competitive banking system that supports both the citizens and the economy of the United States. The contract will enable OCCs mobile bank examiners to be more productive in regulating and supervising 1,600 national banks and 50 federal branches of foreign banks in the United States, which account for nearly two-thirds of the total assets of all U.S. commercial banks.

By improving network connectivity and upgrading OCC equipment, bank examiners will be able to increase productivity and complete tasks more efficiently while working in an increasingly complex banking environment, said Dennis Stolkey, senior vice president of U.S. Public Sector at EDS, an HP company. Our team combines industry best practice mobile workforce services with HP products to meet the I-METRO objectives.

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Muhammad Yunus: How Banking Should Change - BusinessWeek

Posted: 24 Sep 2009 08:09 AM PDT

Posted by: Steve Hamm on September 24

Noble Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus was his level-headed, provocative self this morning when my colleague, Jay Greene, and I met him at the Sheraton Hotel around the corner from our office. We asked him: How can the advocates for the poor capitalize on the downturn? His answer was that the financial system should be reformed in ways to make it more inclusive. "If the institutions have failed, let's not go back to the same thing. Let's fix it. Let's build the bank as an inclusive institution. Let's extend their services to people who don't have them now." He says government regulators and policy makers should make some of their help to banks contingent on their willingness to extend services to the poor, so they don't have to relay on the loan sharks who operate pay-day loan operations and pawn shops. "The government should say, "If you expand, we'll help you. If you don't, we won't," Yunus says.

Unfortunately, most of the help that the US government is going to give banks has already been doled out, so the opportunity to do something constructive may be lost. And, also, unfortunately, banks making sub-prime loans to people who shouldn't haven gotten them was one of the things that got us in this big mess. But, still, Yunus is right that now is the time for the government and the banks to consider new approaches that would extend banking services to the poor without causing unmanageable risk to the banking system.

I don't hear anybody else talking about that. It's a shame about wise men. They're often honored but not heeded.



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