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Issue #1 for S.Mahmood Pelarak 1/3/2009 at 3:19:00 AM - 1/5/2009 at 11:13:40 AM

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A Victim's Tale (Portfolio.com: Top 5) Submitted at 1/4/2009 9:00:00 PM

The victims of Bernard L. Madoff's fraud includes no small number of boldface names and institutional investors. There are Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, financiers Fred Wilpon and Henry Kaufman, and actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. Then there were banks like HSBC and Banco Santander, and nonprofit groups including Yeshiva University and the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation. But a number of average-Joe investors have discovered that they, too, had money invested with Madoff. Their retirement funds, family trusts, and other savings usually found its way to Madoff through "feeder" funds, some of which were run by friends, acquaintances, or financial advisers. Since they were not direct investors with Madoff, their status in recovering any money is uncertain. But there is no doubt that they, too, are victims of what appears to be the greatest Ponzi scheme in history. Here, in his own words, is one investor's story: I n 1992, when I was 67 years old, I unexpectedly found myself with some extra cash on hand. During the preceding half century, I had served in three wars, earned a master's degree, married, bought and paid off a house, and put three daughters through college. I had started my fulltime working life in 1950 as a copyboy and later

reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle and then, for over 30 years, was simultaneously a science writer at UCLA and a freelance journalist. My wife, Rachel, had worked full or part-time during much of that period. We had bought a hillside house in suburban Los Angeles in 1968 and were close to paying off our mortgage. Our two older daughters had married, were working and raising their own families, and our youngest child was independent, and likely to marry in the near future. As a family, we were always quite disciplined about the household budget. As a matter of principle, we never got into debt and we paid off our credit card balances in full every month. I wasn't exactly a tightwad, we traveled frequently overseas, but, as my daughters like to remind me, when they were kids and scrawled drawings, I made them use BOTH sides of a blank sheet. So in 1992, Rachel and I found ourselves with an extra $25,000 in the bank and decided to invest it, but knew enough to know that we knew nothing about the market. So we turned to a trusted friend, whom we shall call Phil, who was our sometime lawyer and a fellow volunteer in local political campaigns. Phil had many years of successful investment experience, and although $25,000 was pretty small potatoes in his league, we insisted that we wanted into the game. Thus I became one of some 99 limited partners in Caroline Investment Co. Phil told me that the

partnership had consistently returned 15 percent to 16 percent a year, sometimes as much as 20 percent, and added that he had millions of his own money in the fund. But he warned me that even he, with decades of experience, had no idea how the partnership managed to generate such high and steady returns. Phil sent me a 73-page document, which I never read closely until after I learned about my link to Bernard Madoff. In the papers, I have learned that Caroline was a limited partner in the Lambeth Fund, operated entirely by Beverly Hills investor and arbitrage maven Stanley Chais, whom Phil had known for many years. Chais, in turn, passed on the funds in Lambeth, Caroline and other partnerships to an unnamed brokerage and investment firm in New York. That firm, we learned since, was Madoff Investments; Chais had known Bernie Madoff for decades, but the name never appeared in any papers and was unknown to Phil. For years, this opacity didn't matter. Like most small-time amateur investors, with a full work and family life, I had happily watched as my stake steadily grew. Even with 25 percent of the profits going to Chais and 5 percent to Phil for their administrative work, I averaged an annual net return of 10 percent to 14 percent. This compounded rapidly, since I didn't need the income to make ends meet. Since my investment was in the form of an I.R.A. account, I didn't have to withdraw money until I was 70½ years old and started receiving mandatory minimum distributions.

I had about $150,000 accumulated in Caroline on Dec. 11, when I received an e-mail from Phil, which started, "I have some terrible news for us." The shocking news, of course, was that Madoff had been arrested for fraud and that the many millions Phil and his daughter, a successful Los Angeles restaurateur, had been wiped out, as had Chais' Lambeth Co.—and my $150,000. Sure the loss hurts, and with the simultaneous devaluation of our house, we have dropped plans to move into an upscale retirement community. On the upside, our mortgage is paid off, I still earn money as a journalist, and I get Social Security. Although my retirement-savings plan with the University of California is sinking like a stone, I'm pretty confident that my wife and I will not go hungry. I take some irrational satisfaction from the thought that, for the first time in my life, I'm in the company of so many millionaires and billionaires, and we are all going down together on the same financial Titanic. The real losers, I'm afraid, will be the families of my three daughters, and my eight grandchildren, to whom I will now leave a rather meager monetary inheritance.Related Links Smart Money, R.I.P. Sex, Drugs, and Options Backdating Cost of Backdating: Six Months, $1 Million

John Travolta 'heartbroken' at death of son Jett (World news | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/5/2009 2:01:47 AM

John Travolta, whose teenage son died suddenly over the weekend, has said he and his wife, the fellow actor Kelly Preston, are "heartbroken" at their loss. Jett Travolta, who was 16 and had a history of seizures, was found unconscious in a bathroom at his family's home at the Old Bahama Bay resort on Grand Bahama island on Friday morning. He was taken by ambulance to Rand Memorial hospital, in Freeport, where he was pronounced dead. A postmortem examination to determine the cause of death is due to be carried out today.

"Jett was the most wonderful son that two parents could ever ask for and lit up the lives of everyone he encountered," Travolta said in a statement posted on his website. "We are heartbroken that our time with him was so brief. We will cherish the time that we had with him for the rest of our lives." Although the brief statement made no mention of Jett's medical history or any possible cause of death, it appears that he may have had epilepsy, and experienced grand-mal convulsions and losses of consciousness. Travolta's lawyers, Michael Ossi and Michael McDermott, told the celebrity website TMZ that Jett had been on anti-seizure medication for

several years. They said the prescription was suspended after the drug lost its effectiveness amid concerns about side-effects, adding that Jett had been suffering about one extremely serious seizure a week. Ossi told People magazine that Travolta, 54, tried to revive his son and was so distraught he had to be pulled away from Jett's body. "He didn't want anything to happen to that boy, and he kept on trying to revive him," Ossi said. "He did mouth -to-mouth until they had to physically remove John to take Jett to the hospital." "He never dreamed of this. Their relationship was so close. He always said, 'I'm happy as long as my kids

Israeli troops enter Gaza

When marketing goes nuclear (Seth's Blog) Submitted at 1/3/2009 10:10:31 AM

Scarcity plus Christmas plus social

pressure plus greed plus kids = critical mass. The most poignant moment comes just after 3:00 when a young boy

are happy.' He is heartbroken ... To bury your son is the worst thing you can ever do." Travolta and his wife have said previously that Jett became very sick when he was diagnosed as a toddler with Kawasaki disease, which leads to inflammation of the blood vessels in young children. Travolta's publicists declined to comment on funeral plans. • United States • Bahamas guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

totally loses it. This is the most disturbing video I've seen today.

(World news | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/4/2009 10:09:39 AM

Israeli ground troops cross the border into the Palestinian territory

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Israel targets international deal on Gaza truce (World news | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/5/2009 2:03:12 AM

Israel hopes its military offensive in Gaza will end with an agreement imposed by the international community rather than a ceasefire renewed directly with the Hamas movement, according to reports in Israel today. Israel aims to convince the international community to accept a deal under which Egypt would prevent smuggling into Gaza across its border, and border crossings into Gaza would operate under international supervision and in the presence of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is run by the West Bankbased Fatah movement, Hamas's bitter rival, the reports said. Senior Israeli cabinet ministers will hold meetings today with a delegation from the European Union and later with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The Ha'aretz newspaper reported that the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and the defence minister, Ehud Barak, yesterday decided against any ceasefire agreement with Hamas for fear it would give legitimacy to the Islamist movement. Hamas said it would send a delegation to Cairo today at Egypt's invitation to talk about how to end the

conflict in Gaza. Egypt mediated the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel that began in June last year and broke down six months later. "The international community will initiate the agreements and will impose it on Hamas," Ha'aretz quoted a senior political source in Jerusalem as saying. "The agreements will be with both the PA and Egypt and then if Hamas will not agree it will pay the price, mostly by even greater isolation." It said Israel had three aims: it wanted Egypt to help stop smuggling into southern Gaza, and suggested the US might be involved in this, perhaps by sending combat engineers to reinforce the border; it wanted EU and Palestinian Authority officials deployed at the Rafah crossing into Egypt, as in the past; and it wanted the US, France and moderate Arab countries to support a UN security council agreement to grant Israel the right to respond to any Hamas violations of the deal. A similar report in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper described the possible deal as "a unilateral international arrangement" which, it said, might be forced on Hamas if it did not agree. It said Israel wanted the border crossings opened only under international supervision, and it suggested Israel wanted mention of calls to release Gilad Shalit, an Israeli

soldier captured two and a half years ago who is still being held in Gaza. The Ma'ariv newspaper said the deal would be a "deterred arrangement. Or, in other words, a broad international arrangement with everyone except Hamas." Livni was quoted in the Makor Rishon-Hatzofe newspaper as saying: "This is not a matter for an isolated operation – and every arrangement should advance the interests of the State of Israel vis-a-vis Hamas. There is no intention here of creating a diplomatic product with Hamas. We need diplomatic products against Hamas, and any product that weakens it is positive in our eyes." In recent days, Hamas has said its conditions for a ceasefire are an end to the Israeli attacks, an end to the Israeli economic blockade of the Gaza Strip and the reopening of the crossings out of Gaza. Before the ceasefire last June, Hamas agreed that PA representatives could operate the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, and said it would accept EU monitors, but insisted Israel should not have the right to close the crossing as in the past. • Israel and the Palestinian territories • Gaza guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Is everything okay? (Seth's Blog) Submitted at 1/4/2009 4:19:00 AM

Unless you work in a nuclear power plant, the answer is certainly no (and if you work there, I hope the answer is yes.) No, everything is not okay. Not in a growing organization. Not if your company is making change happen, or dealing with customers. How could it be? And yet, that's what so many managers focus on. How to make everything okay. We spend so much time smoothing things out, we lose the opportunity for change, or for texture or creativity. Instead of working so hard to make everything okay, perhaps it is more helpful to work hard at living with a world that rarely is.

Do ads work? (Seth's Blog) Submitted at 1/3/2009 3:19:00 AM

If the local bank were offering a sale on dollar bills, ninety cents each, how many would you buy? Most rational people would say, "I'll take them all please." Especially if you had thirty days to pay for them. So, why, precisely, do you have an ad budget? If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working? And if they don't work, why are you running them? The time-tested response is that you're not sure, that ads are risky, that you can't tell. And for some sorts of products and some sorts of ads, you'll get no argument from me. Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per

John Kraemer and Larry Gostin: A case for intervention in Zimbabwe (World news | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 1/5/2009 2:00:02 AM

John Kraemer and Larry Gostin: By any reasonable measure, Mugabe has committed crimes against humanity justifying an international response

click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that's positive, buy, buy, buy. And if you don't know those things, why are you buying digital ads? When Amazon was at its key growth peak, the mantra there was $33. They would buy unlimited ads, of any kind, as long as they generated new customers for $33 or less each. There was a risk that $33 was too high a number for the business to sustain, but the ads were no risk at all. As long as they came in under that number, there was unlimited money to buy them. How often do you hear the marketing person say, "that's a neat idea, but we don't have the budget this year"? Shouldn't she say, "We have an unlimited budget for ads that work"...

Intel, Adobe plan a chicken in every pot, Flash on every HDTV (Engadget) Submitted at 1/5/2009 1:19:00 AM

Intel's been talking up the CE 3100 (née Canmore) processor for quite some time now, and with Adobe as its newest partner -- late again Yahoo? -pushing HD Flash streams to Internet connected TV's and set-top boxes. Frankly, we've already gotten quite used to YouTube and other online video access in the living room, but with the first Flash Lite-enabled system-on-a-chip due by mid-2009 and everyone and their mom

watching TV on Hulu this could be the push that takes online video to the TV mainstream. Still, Intel must know that only Flash support so 2008, we'll be expecting more widgets to come. Filed under: CES, HDTV, Home Entertainment Intel, Adobe plan a chicken in every pot, Flash on every HDTV originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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PowerBook G4 Titanium Serv O'Beer pours when iPhone accelerometer tells it inelegantly modded into desktop to (Engadget) (Engadget)

Submitted at 1/5/2009 2:31:00 AM

Now that the holiday season is officially over ( CES notwithstanding), there's officially no better time to get inebriated and wash away the sorrows of not having another government-recognized holiday for like, ever. After you've drug that dead tree out to the roadside and filled a few buckets with tears, why not try constructing your very Serv O'Beer in order to bring just a sliver of that joy back into your heart? Put simply, the project pictured above utilized Construx as the mechanical platform, a servo driving the action and ioBridge controlling

the system; a so-called "perfect pour" was executed by linking an iPhone accelerometer to the system and turning it up. Have a look at the demonstration vid just past the break -- dollars to donuts it'll make you smile. [Thanks, Hans] Continue reading Serv O'Beer pours when iPhone accelerometer tells it to Filed under: Cellphones, Household Serv O'Beer pours when iPhone accelerometer tells it to originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Submitted at 1/5/2009 1:04:00 AM

We're all for taking lemons and making lemonade, but at least clean up the mess before you showcase it to the world. All kidding aside (sort of...), Sir Bibin and Nick Lee found something better to do with their jacked up PowerBook G4 Titanium than fetch a few pennies on eBay. When the hinges finally cracked, they decided to just fold 'er on over, epoxy a pair of totally lackluster speakers on the side and add a wired Apple keyboard in to create a makeshift

LG previews two new UK-bound LCDs (Engadget) Submitted at 1/5/2009 1:47:00 AM

Stuff.tv has the heads up on two more members of LG's 2009 lineup, the LH5000 and LF7700. The LF7700 LCD should fit the bill for anyone needing an alternative to Panasonic's TX-37LZD81, with integrated FreeSat support, while a plasma version will follow later in the year. If 100Hz isn't enough and 480Hz is too much, the LH5000

drops 200Hz TruMotion tech on European heads later this year. No price or size info for either, but

hopefully all this new kit will slightly make up for a Netflix-less existence suffered by our people across the Atlantic. Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment LG previews two new UK-bound LCDs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

PowerMac (er, iMac, we suppose). Truthfully, we'd be way more into this if not for that very apparent spitball and the circa 1991 telephone cluttering up the masterpiece, but you know what they say about an artist and his / her studio. [Thanks, Michael and Nick] Filed under: Desktops, Laptops PowerBook G4 Titanium inelegantly modded into desktop originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments