Cashback credit cards ‘double’

5 November 2012 Last updated at 19:01 ET

Cashback deals are becoming more common in reward schemes for credit card customers, research has indicated.

The number of cards on the market that carry the feature has doubled in two years, according to the report by financial research group Defaqto.

The report, commissioned by card provider Capital One, suggested that the growth had not been mirrored by other rewards features.

One expert has warned of the danger of choosing a card based on rewards.

Spending

The Defaqto report found that people in the UK could choose from about 245 different credit cards. About three quarters of these were regarded as standard, rather than platinum or gold, cards.

The most common features that these cards carried as customer rewards were points schemes and shopping rewards, that were each found on 20% of cards.

Air miles featured on 10% of cards, while 9% of cards had cashback rewards.

Cashback is the only one of these that has seen a big rise in the past two years, the report suggested. However, it still only features on 22 cards.

Each time the customer uses their card an amount of cashback is accrued. After a set period, usually annually or monthly, the cashback amount is paid automatically to the customer’s credit card.

Cashback amounts can vary between £1.10 and £36 for every £100 spent on the card each month.

“To make the card truly worthwhile a customer would need to spend well in excess of £1,000 per month, so these cards are most likely to appeal to the higher spenders,” the report said.

Habit

For many people this would require a change of habit, by using a credit card for everyday spending.

So, customers should be realistic about whether they would be happy to do this for the cashback rewards, according to Sarah Pennells, founder of the Savvywoman financial website.

“If people are used to paying for their shopping or fuel by cash, then they might not think about getting a credit card out,” she said.

Customers should consider the whole package being offered by a credit card provider when choosing a card, she added.

Cashback would only prove to be a benefit if borrowers paid off their credit card each month, or took advantage of longer interest-free periods, she said. Other considerations when shopping around for a card might include charges when using the card overseas, she added.

BBC News – Business

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Methane warnings ignored before NZ mine disaster

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand coal mining company ignored 21 warnings that methane gas had accumulated to explosive levels before an underground explosion killed 29 workers two years ago, an investigation concluded.

The official report released Monday after 11 weeks of hearings on the disaster found broad safety problems in New Zealand workplaces and said the Pike River Coal company was exposing miners to unacceptable risks as it strove to meet financial targets.

“The company completely and utterly failed to protect its workers,” New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Monday.

The country’s labor minister, Kate Wilkinson, resigned from her labor portfolio after the report’s release, saying she felt it was the honorable thing to do after the tragedy occurred on her watch. She plans to retain her remaining government responsibilities.

The Royal Commission report said New Zealand has a poor workplace safety record and its regulators failed to provide adequate oversight before the explosion.

At the time of the disaster, New Zealand had just two mine inspectors who were unable to keep up with their workload, the report said. Pike River was able to obtain a permit with no scrutiny of its initial health and safety plans and little ongoing scrutiny.

Key said he agrees with the report’s conclusion that there needs to be a philosophical shift in New Zealand from believing that companies are acting in the best interests of workers to a more proscriptive set of regulations that forces companies to do the right thing.

The commission’s report recommended a new agency be formed to focus solely on workplace health and safety problems. It also recommended a raft of measures to strengthen mine oversight.

Key said his government would consider the recommendations and hoped to implement most of them. He would not commit on forming a new agency. Workplace safety issues are currently one of the responsibilities of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

In the seven weeks before the explosion, the Pike River company received 21 warnings from mine workers that methane gas had built up to explosive levels below ground and another 27 warnings of dangerous levels, the report said. The warnings continued right up until the morning of the deadly explosion.

The company used unconventional methods to get rid of methane, the report said. Some workers even rigged their machines to bypass the methane sensors after the machines kept automatically shutting down — something they were designed to do when methane levels got too high.

The company made a “major error” by placing a ventilation fan underground instead of on the surface, the report found. The fan failed after the first of several explosions, effectively shutting down the entire ventilation system. The company was also using water jets to cut the coal face, a highly specialized technique than can release large amounts of methane.

The report did not definitively conclude what sparked the explosion itself, although it noted that a pump was switched on immediately before the explosion, raising the possibility it was triggered by an electrical arc.

The now-bankrupt Pike River Coal company is not defending itself against charges it committed nine labor violations related to the disaster. Former chief executive Peter Whittall has pleaded not guilty to 12 violations and his lawyers say he is being scapegoated.

An Australian contractor was fined last month for three safety violations after its methane detector was found to be faulty at the time of the explosion.

Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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U.S. judge tosses Apple vs. Google lawsuit over patents

(Reuters) – An Apple lawsuit against Google‘s Motorola Mobility unit over alleged patent abuse was thrown out on Monday just hours before trial, a setback for the iPhone maker in its efforts to gain leverage in the smartphone patent wars.

The two rivals were set to square off in a Madison, Wisconsin federal court over the library of patents Google Inc acquired along with Motorola for $ 12.5 billion in May. Apple Inc claimed Motorola‘s licensing practices were unfair.

However, late last week District Judge Barbara Crabb questioned whether she had the legal authority to hear Apple‘s claims, and on Monday she dismissed the case.

A Google spokeswoman said the company was pleased with the order, while an Apple representative declined to comment. In a legal brief filed after Crabb’s ruling, Apple contended that the judge does indeed have the authority to hear its claims.

Lea Shaver, an intellectual property professor at Indiana University School of Law, said a ruling against Google would have diminished Motorola‘s patents as an effective bargaining chip in settlement negotiations.

“This puts Apple back into the position it was before,” Shaver said.

Apple and Microsoft Corp have been litigating in courts around the world against Google and partners like Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which use the Android operating system on their mobile devices.

Apple contends that Android is basically a copy of its iOS smartphone software, and Microsoft holds patents that it contends cover a number of Android features. Microsoft is set for a trial against Motorola in Seattle next week in a case with similar issues as the Apple matter in Wisconsin.

Apple and Microsoft accuse Google of demanding too high a royalty for some of its so-called standard essential patents. Motorola promised to license those patents on fair terms, they argue, in exchange for Motorola technology being adopted as an industry standard.

In Wisconsin, Crabb had ruled during the run-up to trial that she might decide what a fair royalty for Motorola‘s patents should be.

However, in a court filing last week, Apple argued that it would not consider itself bound by Crabb’s rate if it exceeded $ 1 per Apple phone.

Given Apple‘s position, Crabb questioned whether she had the power to issue merely an advisory opinion. “It has become clear that Apple‘s interest in a license is qualified,” Crabb wrote on Friday.

Microsoft, by contrast, has agreed to live with whatever terms U.S. District Judge James Robart sets at the Seattle trial.

In Wisconsin, the trial was scheduled to begin Monday afternoon in Madison, but Crabb dismissed the case during a morning hearing. If Apple cannot convince Crabb to reconsider, then the matter could be appealed.

In its statement, Google said Motorola has long offered licensing at reasonable rates. “We remain interested in reaching an agreement with Apple,” the company said.

The case in U.S. District Court, Western District of Wisconsin is Apple Inc. v. Motorola Mobility Inc., No. 11-cv-178.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie Adler and Tim Dobbyn)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Dizzying array of media streams spotlight election

NEW YORK (AP) — The days of watching Election Night coverage on a single television set may soon be a quaint anachronism.

Americans have an array of alternatives for following returns on Tuesday night. Television news divisions are throwing everything they have into the story. People will be able to construct their own media experiences, seek out desired information instead of waiting for it, participate in conversations and hear analysis that reflects their own perspectives or none in particular.

Virtually all of the media organizations covering the election promise an abundance of information available online, from interactive maps that display state-by-state results to data from exit polls.

It’s expected to be a huge night for social media. And news organizations say they will monitor the conversations and have their own journalists actively participate.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bypass tops stents in diabetics with diseased arteries

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Diabetics with more than one diseased artery fared significantly better if they underwent bypass surgery than those who received drug coated stents following artery clearing procedures to improve blood flow to the heart, according to data from a five-year study presented on Sunday.

After five years, the bypass group had a lower combined rate of heart attacks, strokes and deaths of 18.7 percent versus 26.6 percent for the stent group in the 1,900-patient study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The result was deemed to be highly statistically significant, researchers said.

Previous studies had demonstrated the superiority of bypass surgery over the use of bare metal stents – tiny mesh tubes used to prop open cleared arteries. Researchers suspected that newer stents coated with drugs to prevent reclogging might negate some of the bypass advantage, but that turned out not to be the case.

“The advantages were striking in this trial and could change treatment recommendations for thousands of individuals with diabetes and heart disease,” said Dr. Valentin Fuster, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who presented the findings at the American Heart Association scientific meeting in Los Angeles.

There was a higher incidence of stroke in bypass patients — 5.2 percent versus 2.4 percent. Stroke is a known risk of the surgical procedure in which a piece of a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body is grafted on to re-route blood flow around a blocked heart artery.

But deaths from any cause were significantly lower with bypass surgery than those who received artery clearing angioplasty and a drug eluting stent – 10.9 percent compared with 16.3 percent. There were also twice as many heart attacks among diabetics in the stent group within five years – 99 vs 48, which Fuster called “very significant.”

More than one million bypass surgeries or stenting procedures are performed in the United States each year and some 25 to 30 percent of those involve diabetics with multiple diseased arteries, researchers said.

If the results of this study alter clinical practice, it could eat into lucrative profits of the companies that sell drug coated stents, such as Abbott Laboratories, Boston Scientific Corp and Medtronic Inc. Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson supplied the stents used in the study, but J&J has since exited the stent business.

Dr. David Williams of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study, called the results “very convincing.”

“I think the (treatment) guidelines will recognize this and I do think it will be adopted,” he said.

However, Fuster cautioned that longer term follow-up of patients was necessary.

“We always want to know how long the effects last,” he said. “The gap could begin to close or the results could get better and better.”

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot and Deena Beasley; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bypass tops stents in diabetics with diseased arteries

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Diabetics with more than one diseased artery fared significantly better if they underwent bypass surgery than those who received drug coated stents following artery clearing procedures to improve blood flow to the heart, according to data from a five-year study presented on Sunday.

After five years, the bypass group had a lower combined rate of heart attacks, strokes and deaths of 18.7 percent versus 26.6 percent for the stent group in the 1,900-patient study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The result was deemed to be highly statistically significant, researchers said.

Previous studies had demonstrated the superiority of bypass surgery over the use of bare metal stents – tiny mesh tubes used to prop open cleared arteries. Researchers suspected that newer stents coated with drugs to prevent reclogging might negate some of the bypass advantage, but that turned out not to be the case.

“The advantages were striking in this trial and could change treatment recommendations for thousands of individuals with diabetes and heart disease,” said Dr. Valentin Fuster, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who presented the findings at the American Heart Association scientific meeting in Los Angeles.

There was a higher incidence of stroke in bypass patients — 5.2 percent versus 2.4 percent. Stroke is a known risk of the surgical procedure in which a piece of a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body is grafted on to re-route blood flow around a blocked heart artery.

But deaths from any cause were significantly lower with bypass surgery than those who received artery clearing angioplasty and a drug eluting stent – 10.9 percent compared with 16.3 percent. There were also twice as many heart attacks among diabetics in the stent group within five years – 99 vs 48, which Fuster called “very significant.”

More than one million bypass surgeries or stenting procedures are performed in the United States each year and some 25 to 30 percent of those involve diabetics with multiple diseased arteries, researchers said.

If the results of this study alter clinical practice, it could eat into lucrative profits of the companies that sell drug coated stents, such as Abbott Laboratories, Boston Scientific Corp and Medtronic Inc. Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson supplied the stents used in the study, but J&J has since exited the stent business.

Dr. David Williams of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study, called the results “very convincing.”

“I think the (treatment) guidelines will recognize this and I do think it will be adopted,” he said.

However, Fuster cautioned that longer term follow-up of patients was necessary.

“We always want to know how long the effects last,” he said. “The gap could begin to close or the results could get better and better.”

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot and Deena Beasley; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Reviving Japan’s Economy With ‘Devil Wives’

After her son was born, Terue Suzuki moved back to her childhood home on weekdays so she could work while her sister cared for the baby, leaving her husband alone in the house they shared. “It was like a weekend marriage,” Suzuki says of the arrangement 14 years ago. “I had a satisfying job and really wanted to go back to it. In Japan, when a woman chooses work instead of staying at home to look after her husband, she’s called a ‘devil wife.’ ”

To spur the country’s moribund economy, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda aims to boost the proportion of working women aged 25 to 44 to 73 percent by 2020, from 66.5 percent in 2010.Limited day care, peer pressure, and job inflexibility mean Suzuki remains a minority in Japan, where 70 percent of women quit work with the birth of their first child, says Nana Oishi, a professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. In the U.S., about a third of new mothers don’t return to work, according to a 2010 Goldman Sachs (GS) report.

Suzuki, who remains happily married with two children, says she was fortunate to have the support of her husband and employer. The telecommunications company where she works let her switch departments to leave the office earlier and offered shorter hours, though she chose to remain full-time. She moved to her parents’ place in Yokohama after failing to find a day-care center near her home. Her sister quit a temporary job and looked after the baby for six months until an opening came up at a nursery near her parents’ house. Suzuki, now 45, continued with the “weekend marriage” when her second child was born, for a total of eight years.

A Japanese newspaper called her oniyome, popularizing the term devil wife, in an article on flexible office schedules that highlighted her determination to return to work. The phrase gained widespread awareness in 2005 when national television aired an 11-episode drama called Oniyome Nikki, or Diary of a Devil Wife.

In a survey of more than 6,000 couples in Japan in 2010, 70 percent of respondents said mothers should stop work to focus on raising children when they’re small, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. While Japan topped the list of 144 countries for innovation capacity in the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Report, it placed 87th for women’s participation in the labor force, the second-lowest, after Italy, among Group of Seven developed economies.

More than half of the 700 respondents in a survey by recruiter Robert Walters Japan said the main challenge for working women is balancing career and family. And 7 in 10 said starting a family makes a woman less employable. “I wanted to have kids but I kept putting it off because I wanted to gain recognition for my work,” says Yoko Ogata, an employee at a trading company who has no children.

After she married a co-worker, colleagues told her to “be a good wife,” while others told her husband he “shouldn’t make his wife continue working,” she says. In her mid-30s, Ogata started managing small teams, and when she became pregnant, she says, “I wasn’t sure what to do … I was finally being given responsibility to handle projects, and by getting pregnant I worried that people would say, ‘This is why we can’t use women.’ ”

Ogata, now 46, had a miscarriage after coming home late at night during the seventh week of pregnancy. “My husband and mother-in-law were very angry and asked if I hadn’t had a miscarriage on purpose,” she says. Ogata didn’t tell co-workers about the pregnancy or miscarriage, and she and her husband later divorced.

If Japan’s female employment rate rose to match the 80 percent rate for males, the workforce would grow by 10 percent, or 8.2 million people, spurring a 15 percent expansion of gross domestic product, Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a 2010 report called Womenomics. Easing rules, such as outdoor-space requirements for child-care facilities, would help make that happen, says Kathy Matsui, Goldman’s chief Japan strategist and a mother of two. The government can encourage more women to stay in the workforce, she said in an e-mail, “through greater deregulation and better enforcement of rules regarding equal employment opportunity and pay.”

The bottom line: To boost the economy, Japan wants to increase the proportion of young women who work to 73 percent from 66.5 percent.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Newspaper discloses new Cameron text messages

LONDON (AP) — A British lawmaker says he’s asked the country’s media ethics inquiry to consider newly disclosed text messages sent between Prime Minister David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, the ex-chief executive of Rupert Murdoch‘s British newspaper division.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper on Sunday published two previously undisclosed messages exchanged between the pair, who are friends and neighbors.

Brooks is facing trial on conspiracy charges linked to Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which saw Murdoch close down The News of The World tabloid.

In one newly disclosed message, Cameron thanked Brooks in 2009 for allowing him to borrow a horse, joking it was “fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”

Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant has asked a judge-led inquiry scrutinizing ties between the press and the powerful to examine the messages.

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Facebook Survey Asks All the Wrong Questions [HUMOR]

This evening while I was casually browsing my Facebook news feed, the site asked me if I’d like to take a survey, giving some feedback about my Facebook experience. I’d seen plenty of surveys on Facebook before, but never one from Facebook. I excitedly clicked my approval and began my quest to help improve the service.

[More from Mashable: iPhone Loyalty Wanes After Apple’s Latest Smartphone Release [STUDY]]

It soon became clear the survey was more about making Facebook feel good about itself than actually improving its service (Sample question: “How much fun is Facebook overall?”). The questions were extremely general, and made no reference to any specific features, recent news or the wicked-cool Instagrams I’ve been sharing. Are they even paying attention?

When I asked Facebook about the survey, a spokesperson told me only that, “Facebook runs variations of surveys all the time in order to improve the user experience.” When I asked to see a transcript of the survey questions, she politely refused, probably because Facebook doesn’t want the world to know how banal they are.

[More from Mashable: The Secret of Viral Videos, in One Hilarious Parody]

Well phooey on social networks and their misplaced secrecy, I say! I captured screengrabs of most of the survey questions and compiled them into a gallery, which you can check out below (you can thank me in the comments).

But I think Facebook should see this as a learning experience. If it’s serious about improving its service, it needs to be more direct. Forget the focus-grouped questions about “feelings,” “fun” and “control over privacy” — let’s get to the hard stuff. Here are the questions Facebook should have asked in its survey.

1. Should Facebook increase the size of photos in shared links?

• Nah, “photos” are a fad.


• Only for users who like looking at things.


• Well, it would seem like you’re copying Pinterest, so wait a while and do it on a Friday.

---

2. How bad was that idea to ask people to pay $ 7 to promote posts in their friends’ news feeds?

• Facepalm bad.


• Napalm bad.


• “When did Zynga start running your business development?” bad.

---

3. Facebook’s IPO: What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?

• A huge star collapsing into a black hole.


• The end of Raiders where that guy’s face melts off.


• An exquisite vision of the future filled with awesomeness (CEO of Instagram only).

---

4. How much less respect do you have for Facebook after that ridiculous ad with all the chairs?

• A bit less.


• Astronomically less.


• You know that ocean trench near Puerto Rico? Keep going.

---

5. Should Facebook just admit that Google+ schooled it with Hangouts?

• Probably.


• Not at all — one-to-one Skyping is amazing. It’s 2008, right?


• I wouldn’t worry too much. Hangouts are a feature I only use all the time.

---

6. And dude, how drunk with power is Twitter right now?

• I know, right?!


• Twitter is so lame. Tagged is totally the future!


• Twitter is the new Instagram, if Instagram were a spam-filled mess you couldn’t find photos in if you tried.

---

What other questions should the Facebook survey have asked? Shout out your suggestions in the comments.

Facebook’s Customer Survey

You may see a survey like this one on Facebook. The company says it presents surveys to its users all the time to “improve the user experience.”

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Colin Firth, Michael Fassbender set for A. Scott Berg adaptation ‘Genius’

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Colin Firth and Michael Fassbender will star in “Genius,” directed by Michael Grandage, with Film Nation handling international sales, the company announced on Thursday.

Based on A. Scott Berg‘s biography “Max Perkins: Editor of Genius,” the tells the story of the relationship between Thomas Wolfe (Fassbender) and editor Max Perkins (Firth), the screenplay is written by John Logan.

“Genius” will be produced by James Bierman for the Michael Grandage Company, launched at the end of 2011 by Grandage, the former artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse. Bierman served as executive producer at Donmar and co-formed MGC with Grandage. MGC is producing Logan’s new play, “Peter and Alice,” to be directed by Grandage, as part of a season of plays in London in Spring 2013.

FilmNation is selling the film at the AFM. CAA will arrange the financing and represent the film’s North American distribution rights. Principal photography is scheduled to start early in 2014.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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