ICT magazine

All the former Saturday Night Live presidents come together to save the economy and urge Wall Street reform in one new Funny or Die video! A non-profit group called Americans for Financial Reform is sponsoring the new sketch, which features current and former SNL stars from the past four ...

The essence of the government reform of the pension system, supported by the IMF, is a reduction of the number of pensioners, Diana Dragutinović says. “The reform also includes increase of the lowest with the reduction of the highest pensions,” the finance minister told B92.

Barack Obama unveils a revised health-reform planHEALTH reform has been the Obama administration’s main domestic policy priority for nearly a year, but the president himself has been frustratingly slippery on the topic. Although he has given plenty of speeches on the topic and discussed various worthy ideas, he has sounded ...

Two former high-level CIA officers have said that the government's recent "reform" of the intelligence services has made it more difficult to fight terrorism.Specifically, Jack Rice - a former CIA field officer - told Keith Olbermann yesterday that the...

Debate over reform of the dominant state-owned sector is growing, but it is not being matched by actionReform of Vietnam's lumbering state-owned sector has slowed. The global economic and financial crisis has made conditions for "equitising", or part-privatising, state-run companies more challenging, and some policymakers also seem to be having ...

Interior Minister Ivica Dačić says the Interior Ministry (MUP) priorities for 2010 will be to continue police reforms and fight organized crime and terrorism. Dačić told reporters in Belgrade on Thursday that MUP would work on implementing the traffic safety law and the law on confiscating property gained through organized ...

It took three days of votes in the Senate but finally U.S. President Obama’s healthcare bill is set for its final passage in the upper house of Congress today. Once passed in the Senate it will still be subject to more tough horse-trading as it goes back to the lower ...

On the eve of an unusual Christmas Eve Senate vote to pass health care reform legislation, President Barack Obama said Wednesday he was "very proud" of the overhaul lawmakers are set to pass. "I'd say we did really well," Obama told National Public Radio in an interview. ...

An ambitious overhaul of India’s confusing hotch-potch of indirect taxes could give business a boostTO MANY Indians the tendu leaf is a source of comfort. Hand-picked, dried then dampened, the leaf is rolled into the beedis, or cigarettes, that glow in India’s winter gloom. But the leaf is also a ...

As I have repeatedly pointed out, proposed derivatives legislation will not make things better:A leading credit default swap expert (Satyajit Das) says that the new credit default swap regulations not only won't help stabilize the economy, they might ...

Business lobbyists complain that a regulatory tsunami is on its way. But some firms are embracing the proposed reforms“WHEN people hear the word regulation, they feel stifled, delayed, and many times they believe that government is being intrusive,” said Hilda Solis, America’s labour secretary, on December 7th as she unveiled ...

Abba is the band the British public would most like to see reform, according to a new survey. The poll by royalties organisation PRS for Music showed that the Swedish popsters bagged a quarter of the votes, more than the combined number for The Police and Pink Floyd, who took second ...

In response to Senator Dodd's proposed bill - which uses a lot of buzzwords that sound like reform, but really just maintains the status quo - several writers have forcefully argued that we need to focus on the actual purpose of banking.As a number of ...

A source on the Hill sent me the following summary of Senator Dodd's proposed financial reform bill. My source notes:The summary leaves out Sections 1201-1204, which contain serious changes to the Federal Reserve bank structures, transparency elements,...

The House of Representatives has approved a more than USD 1tr plan by majority Democrats to overhaul the U.S. health care system. More than three dozen Democrats broke with their party, and all but one Republican opposed the measure, which marks a major victory in President Barack Obama's effort to ...

New legislation would allow Universal Service Fund to be used for broadband deployment, expanding the USF from its traditional use as fund to subsidize phone service in under-served and rural areas and Internet connections in schools and libraries. - Reps. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Lee Terry (R-NE) ...

Yesterday, Elliot Spitzer said that the White House's defense of the financial status quo will give Republicans powerful ammunition in the 2010 elections.Democratic cheerleader Markos Moulitsas (the "Kos" behind Daily Kos) wrote the following about the...

TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky says in a new report that TARP has allowed the too big to fails to get even bigger, and that:Absent meaningful regulatory reform, TARP runs the risk of merely reanimating markets that had collapsed under the weight ...

Former Sugababes member Mutya Buena has reportedly been talking to her old bandmates on phone for hours to try and convince them to come together to form a complete new band. The singer is apparently trying to persuade founder members Keisha Buchanan and Siobhan Donaghy to start all over again. Seemingly, Buena ...

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is due to meet Czech PM Jan Fischer to discuss progress towards ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The Czech Republic is one of two EU members not to have ratified the treaty so far.