FDIC needs $24 billion, chief says

WASHINGTON Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman L. WilliamSeidman said today that "action should be taken early next year" toinject billions of dollars from banks into the government fundprotecting deposits.

Seidman, in testimony for the House banking subcommittee onfinancial institutions, suggested the nation's commercial banks needto inject 1 percent of their deposits, or $24 billion, into the fund.

Also, annual deposit insurance premiums should be raised for thethird time in as many years to 23 cents for every $100 in deposits -nearly triple the 8.3 cents charged last year - he said.

Such a burden "would add only marginally to bank failures," …

Seeking Funds, Flamel Files For Public Offering In U.S.

BioWorld International Correspondent

PARIS - Flamel Technologies SA filed a preliminary prospectus supplement to its recently filed shelf registration statement with the SEC relating to a proposed underwritten offering of 3.8 million ordinary shares in the form of American Depository Shares, consisting of 2 million shares of common stock offered by the company and 1.8 million shares from an existing shareholder.

Merrill Lynch & Co. is acting as the lead underwriter for the offering, while UBS Securities LLC, SG Cowen Securities Corp., Punk Ziegel & Co., Merriman Curhan Ford & Co. and Brean Murray & Co. Inc. are acting as co-managers. Underwriters have …

QUASHING CAMPUS DEBATE.(PERSPECTIVE)

Byline: SUZANNE FIELDS

Pity the students at Brown University. They're caught in a crossfire between students who steal student newspapers that print things they don't like and students who demand the right to read and decide for themselves.

What ignited the civil war was an advertisement in the Brown Daily Herald that set out 10 reasons against reparations to black Americans for the slavery of their ancestors. David Horowitz, a onetime '60s radical who's a conservative now and who edits Heterodoxy, a magazine that often lampoons political correctness on campus, placed the ad and has become a moving target for the narrow-minded.

He knows how to make …

The censors are coming!(Editorials)

Few Independence Days have found the media less independent. The First Amendment is under attack from all sides, and, if a study by think tank Freedom Forum is any indication, "the public" doesn't much care. According to the report released last week, a majority of Americans wholeheartedly favor government regulation of media content. They won't say that, of course, once some show that they like is yanked or edited into submission, but by then it may be too late.

Meanwhile, Congress is ready to hike fines for indecency, and the FCC is ready to regulate "offending" language and images. Many broadcasters have been intimidated into canning popular programs they would …

Advocates Seek Puerto Rico Cockfight Ban

ISLA VERDE, Puerto Rico - With cockfighting about to lose its last bastion in the United States, animal rights activists are training their sights on Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory where the blood sport is both beloved tradition and big business.

Cockfighting is illegal in 49 states, and the governor of Louisiana - the pastime's last U.S. refuge - signed a law Thursday that will make it a crime to fight birds beginning in August 2008. New Mexico banned the sport on June 15.

But Puerto Rico shows no signs of following suit: Cockfighting is so entrenched that the territory's legislature recently approved a bill establishing it as a "cultural right" of islanders.

…

We'll fight to save our village green

A HIGH Court battle has been launched to strip a wildlife haven inHanham of its "village green" status.

The tag means Magpie Bottom, off Tabernacle Road, is safe fromdevelopment.

But the landowners, Cheltenham Builders, have launched a bid tohave the status overturned, clearing the way for them to build newhomes on the site.

The land was registered as "common land" by South GloucestershireCouncil in September last year But the company is claiming that theland had not been used for leisure in the 20 years beforehand, whichthe law states has to be the case for it to be registered as avillage green.

Opening its case at the High Court in London on …

Bulgarian Stock Exchange - Daily Bulletin, Selected Announcements - Mar 1, 2010.

Agricultural Land Opportunity Fund Mel Invest REIT-Sofia /6A7/ has filed the following information with X3 News: - According to Annex No 6 signed on 26.02.2010 to the service contract between Agricultural Land Opportunity Fund Mel Invest REIT and the service company Terra Services OOD, the annual remuneration to the service company for maintenance and management of the agricultural estates of the Fund shall be decreased from 0.75% to 0.375% (exclusive of VAT) of the average assets' value per annum of the real estate investment trust effective from 01.03.2010.The entire notification is available at http://www.x3news.com.

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Monbat AD-Sofia /5MB/ submitted to …