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By Natalia Drozdiak
BRUSSELS—Belgian postal service Bpost and Dutch rival PostNL on Sunday said they had been in merger talks but that negotiations ended without an agreement.
Bpost had made a friendly offer for all the shares of PostNL, but "these negotiations have, in the end, not led to agreement on the terms of such a transaction," the companies said in similar statements on their respective websites.
Trading in shares of both companies was halted on Friday, following Belgian media reports that Bpost had submitted the offer to acquire its Dutch competitor. Spokespeople for the companies on Friday had neither confirmed nor denied the talks and said only that they would issue a statement before the market opens on Monday.
The postal sector in Europe is suffering from declining mail volumes, though it is experiencing rapid growth in parcel delivery, as more customers shop for goods online. PostNL says it is the leading mail and parcels company in the Benelux—Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Both companies operate in countries across Europe, North America and Asia.
Bpost has a market capitalization of around 4.87 billion euros ($5.41 billion), nearly three times PostNL's market cap of around €1.7 billion.
The Belgian state owns about 51% of Bpost, which was first listed on the Brussels stock exchange in 2013. PostNL was privatized by the Dutch government in 1989, when it was known as PTT Post.
Bpost's revenue in 2015 slipped 2.3% to €2.4 billion, while PostNL's revenue came in flat at about €3.5 billion.
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By Ulrike Dauer
FRANKFURT—Bayer AG Chief Executive Werner Baumann has invited environmental groups to talk with the company about its desire to acquire U.S. competitor Monsanto Co. in a $62 billion dealthat would create the world's largest agrochemicals company.
In an interview with German Sunday newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Mr. Baumann also signaled that the Monsanto brand could disappear following a successful integration of the businesses.
"We are aware of Monsanto's reputation," Mr. Baumann told the newspaper, according to an advance copy of the interview made available on Saturday. But "the Bayer brand has an excellent world-wide reputation and appeal. This needs to be used," he added.
A Bayer spokesman confirmed on Sunday that the interview accurately reflected Mr. Baumann's remarks.
Monsanto on Tuesday rejected Bayer's offer of $122 a share as too low, but both companies left the door openfor further talks.
Since Bayer's plan to acquire Monsanto became known on May 18, non-governmental organizations have voiced concerns that the group's dominant market position in the seeds and pesticides markets would lead to higher prices, limit consumer choice and pave the way for Monsanto's genetically modified crops and glyphosate weedkiller to spread into Europe, where opposition to them is strong and their use restricted.
In the newspaper interview, Mr. Baumann invited Monsanto opponents world-wide to a dialogue with Bayer management. "As much as I talk to our investors to convince them of the plans, the offer also stands for environmental groups and other nongovernment organizations," Mr. Baumann told the newspaper. "Let's talk about the matter and its prospects."
Bayer remains committed to social responsibility, Mr. Baumann said, adding that Bayer would improve business practices at Monsanto after the acquisition. "Our way of doing business may differ from the way Monsanto does. I can assure you that we would conduct these businesses based on the same standards as our other operations."
Mr. Baumann conceded that investors have voiced concern about of possible reputational risks to Bayer stemming from a takeover, although these aren't investors' main focus.
Several analysts cautioned that the transaction could be too much of a financial stretch and that Bayer's business focus would shift too much toward agriculture from drug and chemicals. But many said the deal would make strategic sense, also considering recent mergers and acquisitions by peers.
Mr. Baumann reiterated that Bayer won't need to sell any businesses to finance the deal, which it plans to shoulder with a combination of debt and equity.
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By Nicole Friedman
Oil-supply outages are at their highest level in more than a decade, bolstering the "fear premium" that has helped push crude prices to $50 a barrel.
About 3.5 million barrels a day worth of production is off line because of disruptions such as militant attacks in Nigeria, wildfires in Canada and political unrest in Libya—more than 3% of the global total, says research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC. That is likely the highest since the Iraq war hit output there in 2003, says Jacques Rousseau, the firm's managing director of oil and gas.
At the same time, there is less slack to fill supply gaps. Unused production capacity that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries can bring on quickly has dwindled, and the glut of output from other producers, including U.S. shale companies, has ebbed as companies cut back amid lower prices.
"There isn't a lot of extra supply out there," said Ann-Louise Hittle, lead oil-market analyst at energy-consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. "That's when you start to get a risk premium back in the market. It is absolutely to be expected and it is, in our opinion, just the beginning."
Natural disasters or political unrest in oil-producing nations can halt production and disrupt shipping routes. Such events have historically boosted oil prices, because traders worry about the availability of future supplies.
In 2014 and 2015, however, the oil market mostly ignored occasional supply disruptions, from sanctions on Iran to export-terminal closures in Libya. Traders focused instead on the growing crude surplus produced by U.S. shale companies, sending prices tumbling 76% before they bottomed in February.
After talks of an output freeze among major producing nations fizzled in April, traders say the reduced supply from unplanned outages has been a primary factor driving U.S. oil prices from below $27 a barrel in February to more than $50 a barrel intraday on Thursday. U.S. crude settled Friday at $49.33 a barrel, down 0.3%.
An oil-worker strike in Kuwait in April briefly shut down nearly half the Gulf nation's production. Wildfires in Alberta, Canada, this month forced the shutdown of production facilities in the country's oil-sands region.
In Nigeria, a militant group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers has claimed responsibility for attacks on a production facility and an export terminal. The country's output has fallen to the lowest level since 2009.
Some think the rise in outages is in part a byproduct of depressed crude prices. When oil is cheap, producing nations' budgets suffer. That makes it harder for some governments to boost spending to head off unrest and deprives oil facilities of money needed for maintenance and recovery.
"At $100 a barrel, you can paper over a lot of problems with money," said Helima Croft, head of commodities strategy at RBC Capital Markets. "2016 is proving to be the year of reckoning for the weakest producers."
Some analysts think the boost from the disruptions may already be waning. Canadian officials have lifted a mandatory evacuation order on certain production sites in Alberta, and Kuwait's output has returned to normal. Even in Libya, where unrest has kept the country's production below capacity for years, some analysts expect exports to increase.
"Some of the bullish sentiment has to ease," said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, which oversees $128 billion. "There's some limits to how far this can go."
Others aren't so sure that supply disruptions are going away. Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela together produced 25% of OPEC's total crude output in April, according to the International Energy Agency. Each is struggling with outages or potential disruptions.
Iraq is trying to keep its production high amid the threat of Islamic State. Many analysts warn that production could fall in Venezuela because of chronic power outages in the cash-strapped nation and disputes about payments to international oil-field-service providers.
Militant attacks continue in Nigeria, including one related to a Chevron Corp. facility on Thursday. "You could be looking at a sustained outage for a long period," Ms. Croft at RBC said of the country's total output.
Unplanned production outages are the highest since at least 2003, when the war in Iraq briefly halted nearly all production in that country, analysts say.
During the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and the overthrow of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, supply disruptions helped lift global crude prices above $110 a barrel on average that year and in 2012, up from an average of about $80 a barrel in 2010.
Since late 2012, global supply disruptions have held more than two million barrels a day off the global crude market, according to ClearView. Fear of lost production after Islamic State seized some Iraqi cities briefly helped push global oil prices above $110 a barrel in mid-2014.
If supply was still growing fast, disruptions might not affect prices as much. But production in the U.S. and other parts of the world is falling as companies cut back.
"Today, it doesn't look like we will see a return to excess supply conditions," said Bo Christensen, chief analyst at Danske Invest, which manages $100 billion in assets. "That makes the market susceptible to other types of risks, of course including geopolitical risks."
By Giovanni Legorano, Liam Moloney
MILAN—Italy's backstop fund for banks, Atlante, has raised €4.25 billion ($4.80 billion) from 67 Italian and international intuitions, the company managing it said on Friday.
Investors include banks, insurers, banking foundation and state-controlled investment agency Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. No investor holds a stake in the fund greater than 20%.
Earlier in April, the Italian government moved ahead with the privately funded investment vehicle, dubbed Atlante, aimed at shoring up weak banks and erecting a firewall against mounting worries over the health of lenders in the eurozone's third-largest economy. The fund was established by the Italian asset manager Quaestio Capital Management SGR.
The mission of the fund is to be a backstop facility for banks' cash calls requested by regulators where there is a risk the new shares remain unsold and shareholders, bondholders and depositors are consequently bailed in.
The fund is also designed to buy bad loans from Italian banks to kick-start a market which has struggled to take off, owing to the unwillingness of banks to sell those loans at the prices offered by buyers.
"It's a restructuring fund, we don't want to become long-term investors [in banks]," said Alessandro Penati, Quaestio's Chairman. "The sooner we sell, the better it is."
Mr. Penati added that the aim of the fund it is also to give an "electroshock to the bad loans market, thus facilitating their sale and the recovery of the banking system."
The first test for the fund is a €1.5 billion capital increase launched by troubled lender Banca Popolare di Vicenza SpA, whose offer period ended midday Friday. Atlante has agreed to buy unsold shares in this cash call, replacing UniCredit SpA, which was the initial underwriter of the capital increase.
Mr. Penati said the fund has the financial resources to support Vicenza's share sale.
Atlante targeted to raise between €4 billion and €6 billion. Although the fund managed to raise an amount at the bottom range of its target, Mr. Penati said that creating an investment fund of that value in 15 days was "an historical record."
The fund targets a 6% annual return for its investors, among which it can count Italy's two largest banks UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, which invested €1 billion each.
Mr. Penati said this return is much lower than the 16% to 18% median return normally required by investors in bad loans.
This should help reduce the difference between the prices investors are willing to pay and these banks are willing to accept, Mr. Penati said.
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By Ryan Dezember
Banks have been reducing their exposure to energy companies since oil prices started to collapse in 2014. Now, one oil producer, weary of its lenders cutting its credit line, is reducing its exposure to banks.
Fieldwood Energy LLC, a closely held Houston-based driller, sold about $390 million of new debt on Friday to a group of institutional investors, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is using the proceeds to repay its bank lenders, these people said.
While this move means Fieldwood is taking on $20 million a year in additional interest expenses, the company opted for the new loan because the banks had cut the company's credit limit by nearly $1 billion and it wanted to eliminate the possibility of further reductions, people familiar with the matter said.
The deal is another sign that many investors are becoming optimistic about the oil-price rebound, which lifted crude prices temporarily back to $50 this week. Still, prices are down 44% since September 2014.
In contrast, many banks are trying to cut their exposure to energy producers. Lenders have been cutting many of these companies' credit lines, which are based on the value of their untapped oil and gas reserves.
Credit cuts this spring—when banks typically conduct the first of twice-annual collateral reviews—have been the steepest since the downturn, even as oil prices have nearly doubled from the 52-week low hit in February. Credit limits of 29 companies were cut an average of 33%, according to Citi Research, part of Citigroup Inc.
One of the largest lenders in the oil patch, Wells Fargo & Co., said this past week that it has decreased two-thirds of the reserve-backed loans it has reviewed this spring. During the first quarter, Wells reduced the value of its loans and unfunded commitments to oil companies by 3%, to $40.7 billion.
Yet as bank financing flows out of the energy sector, investor appetite for energy exposure has increased.
North American oil and gas producers have sold more than $30 billion of new shares since the start of 2015, with much of the money used to pay down bank loans. Investor interest has been aided by gains in energy stocks. The energy sector in the S&P 500 is up 11% year to date, compared with the broader index's 2.7% rise.
Oil-price gains also have prompted a rally in junk bonds from energy companies. Citi's High Yield Energy Index is up 15% on the year, more than twice the gains seen in the broader junk bond market.
One frequent seller of stock over the past two years is Parsley Energy Inc. Parsley's stock is up 40% this year, and this week it became the first exploration-and-production company to sell junk bonds in 2016. Investors placed orders for more than 10 times the $200 million of debt that the Texas oil producer sold, according to people familiar with the matter. Parsley said it plans to use proceeds to help pay for property acquisition.
Still, in a couple of instances buyers of recent stock offerings have been wiped out, and some debt investors also are at risk of losses with many companies filing for bankruptcy protection.
Bonanza Creek Energy Inc. in February 2015 tapped investors' willingness to bet on a quick rebound in oil prices by selling new shares in a follow-on offering. Bonanza Creek sold shares at $26 and used the roughly $200 million of proceeds to pay down its bank debt, including some owed to lenders involved in the stock offering, according to securities filings.
This month, its banks cut the company's credit line to below what it had borrowed. Bonanza Creek's shares plunged 35% on Tuesday, to $2.06, after the company disclosed that it was overdrawn by $88 million and working with lenders to figure out how to pay it back. A Bonanza Creek spokesman declined to comment. On Friday, Bonanza Creek's shares closed at $2.53, up 2.4% on the day.
Fieldwood, which is controlled by energy investment firm Riverstone Holdings Inc., in February was downgraded four notches deeper into junk territory by credit-rating firm Moody's Investors Service, which cited the company's "unsustainably high debt burden in relation to its cash flow potential in a low commodity price environment."
Fieldwood's borrowing limit was cut to $1.75 billion in April 2015 from $2.25 billion and reduced again in autumn to $1.3 billion by the 23 banks that make up its lending group, the people said.
That last cut made Fieldwood, one of the largest producers in the Gulf of Mexico, overdrawn and triggered a series of financial moves and negotiations with its other debt investors that culminated in Friday's deal.
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By Christopher Whittall, Saumya Vaishampayan
A rally in technology shares this week propelled the Nasdaq Composite to its largest weekly gain since February.
Stocks rose slightly Friday ahead of a holiday weekend in the U.S., with the stock market closed Monday for Memorial Day.
This week's advance, which was led by riskier corners of the market, underscored investors' confidence in the U.S. economy. Data released Friday showed that the economy's slowdown in the first quarter wasn't as bad as initially thought, and Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said that a rate increase could be appropriate in the coming months if the economy and labor market continue to improve.
Still, gains in the broader market are likely to be capped, as they have been in recent months, as investors continue to focus on weak global growth, uncertainty about the path of U.S. interest rates and elevated valuations. The Dow and S&P haven't closed at all-time highs in a year.
"We're expecting the markets to be in this choppy pattern for the foreseeable future," said Bob Landry, portfolio manager at USAA Investment Solutions.
The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.65% Friday. For the week, the index rallied 3.4%, its biggest weekly rise since the week ended Feb. 19.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 44.93 points, or 0.25%, to 17873.22 and the S&P 500 rose 0.4%. Both indexes rose more than 2% for the week, marking their best weeks since March.
Investors have recalibrated their expectations for the path of U.S. interest rates over the past two weeks, sparking a rally in the dollar and bank shares. Improving data and a chorus of upbeat Fed speakers have signaled that a rise in short-term interest rates could come as soon as the Fed's June 14-15 meeting.
Fed-funds futures, used by investors to place bets on U.S. central-bank policies, showed the odds of a rate increase at the Fed's June meeting are 30%, up from 13% a month ago, according to CME Group. The same futures contracts suggest a 62% probability of an increase by July, up from 28%.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.851% from 1.823% on Thursday.
"There is very little barrier to another rate hike," said David Stubbs, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, who expects the Fed to move in June or July.
Mr. Stubbs said that inflation is moving in the right direction, financial conditions have improved from the start of the year and there is "good momentum" in the labor market—all green lights, in his view, for another rate increase.
The KBW Nasdaq Bank index of large commercial lenders rose more than 3% this week. Rising rates tend to be good for banks because they widen the difference between the interest banks charge on loans and what they pay for deposits. Shares of financial firms in the S&P 500 rallied 2.6%, helping drive the broader market higher.
Sectors that were hit hard earlier this year, when investors were worried about the possibility of an economic downturn in the U.S., advanced. Technology shares in the S&P 500 rose 3.6% for the week. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index posted a weekly gain of 4.5%. The Russell 2000, the benchmark for small-company shares, rallied 3.4%.
The WSJ Dollar Index is up about 3% this month as investors have considered the prospect of a June or July rate increase.
The dollar continued to rise Friday. The euro fell 0.6% against the dollar to $1.1125, while the dollar rose 0.4% against the Japanese yen.
"If the Fed does raise rates [soon], then you could see the dollar continue to pick up and that could hurt some multinational tech companies…but we're not at that point yet," said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Boston Private Wealth LLC. Mr. Pavlik has recently added to his position in International Business Machines, in part because of the company's dividend.
In commodities, U.S. crude oil fell 0.3% to $49.33 a barrel, after briefly touching $50 earlier this week.
A rally in energy prices helped propel global stocks higher in recent months after steep falls at the start of the year. U.S. crude oil has rallied this month, mainly thanks to disruptions to production and pipelines that have cut supply.
The rise has relieved pressure on risky assets such as stocks and high-yield debt, which fell sharply in line with oil prices at the start of the year on concerns over a low oil price pushing up defaults in the energy sector.
"The main driver of markets this year has been what's going on in commodities," said Mr. Stubbs, who noted that the higher oil price should boost inflation expectations and feed into the Fed's considerations over interest rates.
Mr. Stubbs said oil at around $50 to $60 a barrel is still cheap for consumers without being too painful for producers.
"It is basically a sweet spot," he said.
The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.2%. For the week, the index gained 3.4%, its largest since the week ended Feb. 19.
Asian markets ended mostly higher Friday. Japan's Nikkei Stock Average rose 0.4% after data Friday showed Japanese consumer prices fell again in April. The continuing falls could add to pressure on the Bank of Japan to unveil more easing measures to boost inflation—a move that can support stocks.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.3% and notched its seventh-straight week of gains.
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By Mike Cherney
The dollar extended gains on Friday after Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said it would be appropriate for the central bank to raise interest rates "probably in the coming months."
The WSJ Dollar Index, which tracks the U.S. dollar against 16 currencies, was up about 0.5% in recent trading, compared with a gain of 0.3% before Ms. Yellen's talk. The euro was recently down 0.7% against the dollar to $1.1118 and the dollar gained 0.5% against the yen to ¥110.2480. Earlier in the day, the euro was down 0.4% against the dollar, while the dollar had been 0.1% higher against the yen.
Omer Esiner, chief market analyst at Commonwealth Foreign Exchange, said in a note that Ms. Yellen's comments would continue to underpin the dollar, but that more positive economic data—such as the coming jobs report for May—would be needed to show the U.S. economy is strong enough to warrant a rate increase.
The comments suggest a "modestly more hawkish policy bias from Ms. Yellen—a known dove," Mr. Esiner said.
Higher rates are positive for the dollar because it makes the currency more attractive to yield-seeking investors. Some Fed officials had recently suggested the central bank could raise rates at its next policy meeting in June, which at the time was contrary to market expectations. Interest-rate futures were recently pricing in a 34% chance the Fed raises rates in June, up from 24% earlier in the day, according to CME Group.
Ms. Yellen, speaking at an event at Harvard University, said it would be appropriate for the Fed to raise rates "gradually and cautiously" if the economy and the labor market continue to improve. The Fed raised rates in December for the first time in nearly a decade, and investors have been paying close attention to Fed officials for clues regarding the timing of the next increase.
"Her comments are particularly important because many recall her speech two months ago in NY, where she put the kibosh on the talk from several regional presidents about an April hike," Brown Brothers Harriman said in a note Friday, prior to Ms. Yellen's talk.
Earlier in the day, the dollar got a boost when the Commerce Department said that gross domestic product expanded at a 0.8% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the first quarter, up from the initial estimate of 0.5%.
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By Carolyn Cui
ICBC Standard Bank PLC has become the first Chinese bank to operate as a U.S.-registered swap dealer, its latest international expansion effort.
The bank said Friday that it had received approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to be a "provisionally registered swap dealer," a role that would allow the bank to offer over-the-counter derivatives to U.S. clients.
A swap dealer acts as a market maker in the swap market, often by entering into swap agreements with counterparts. The market has come under heightened scrutiny after the financial crisis.
ICBC Standard, which is 60% owned by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd., will be the latest to join the 106 financial institutions that were designated by the CFTC as swap dealers as of May 10.
In a statement, Marc van der Spuy, chief executive of ICBC Standard, said "this swap dealer designation is crucial" for its growth in the U.S.
The bank was founded in February 2015 after ICBC, the world's largest bank by assets, acquired a stake in Standard Bank's London-based Global Markets business.
Earlier this month, ICBC Standard agreed to buy one of Europe's largest vaults from Barclays PLC, in a move to push into the business of precious-metal clearing and trading.
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By Paul Vigna
Welcome to Evening MoneyBeat, WSJ's closing-bell roundup of all the news and developments in the capital markets. To receive this newsletter, click here: http://on.wsj.com/MoneyBeatEveningSignup
U.S. stocks were pretty quiet on Friday. Many folks already had gone for the holiday weekend. Those left tuned into Janet Yellen.
The morning did bring a revised take on first-quarter GDP, which was boosted to 0.8% from the initial reading of 0.5%. That's not a material change, and most people shrugged it off. After all, the market has already shrugged off the whole first quarter, hoping for better numbers in the second. From then on, it was a waiting game for Ms. Yellen.
The Federal Reserve chairwoman was up in Massachusetts, being honored at Harvard's Radcliffe Day and doing a Q&A with economist and professor Greg Mankiw. She said barely enough about rates for anybody in the market to justify delaying their start to the weekend. In response to one question, she said if the economy and labor markets continued to strengthen, then it "probably" would be appropriate to raise rates over the next few months.
That's about what you would expect a Fed official to say who doesn't want to say anything. Ms. Yellen has one more public appearance (June 6) between now and the Fed's next policy meeting on June 14-15. The market bounced around a bit, because that's what markets do when important people from the central bank speak, but the reality is that nothing changed.
Friday's trading volume was the second-lowest this year (March 28 was the lowest). For the Dow, the week's gain of 2.1% snapped a four-week losing streak. The S&P 500 rose 2.3% on the week, its second positive week in a row. The Nasdaq was up a sharp 3.4%, its second consecutive up week.
There's a short week ahead, but it holds at least one data point that might change things, the monthly jobs report that arrives Friday morning.
Monday: U.S. markets closed for Memorial Day.
Tuesday: Personal income and outlays (8:30 a.m. ET); S&P Case Shiller home price index (9:00); consumer confidence (10:00).
Wednesday: U.S. manufacturing PMI (9:45); construction spending (10:00); Fed's Beige Book (2:00 p.m.).
Thursday: ADP May payrolls report (8:15); weekly jobless claims (8:30); EIA natural gas (10:30) and petroleum (11:00) reports;
Friday: May nonfarm payrolls report (8:30); April trade report (8:30); U.S. services PMI (9:45); manufacturers inventories (10:00); ISM services report (10:00).
By Jean Eaglesham, Anupreeta Das
Gary Heinz is little known on Wall Street, but he belongs to a select club.
In 2013, the former UBS Group AG employee was sent to prison on charges of rigging bids tied to the municipal-bond market. Now, he sits at a halfway house in San Antonio, awaiting his release in July.
It rarely happens that way.
The Wall Street Journal examined 156 criminal and civil cases brought by the Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission against 10 of the largest Wall Street banks since 2009. In 81% of those cases, individual employees were neither identified nor charged. A total of 47 bank employees were charged in relation to the cases. One was a boardroom-level executive, the Journal's analysis found.
The analysis shows not only the rarity of proceedings brought against individual bank employees, but also the difficulty authorities have had winning cases they do bring.
Most of the bankers who were charged pleaded guilty to criminal counts or agreed to settle a civil case, with those facing civil charges paying a median penalty of $61,000. Of the 11 people who went to trial or a hearing and had a ruling on their case, six were found not liable or had the case dismissed. That left a total of five bank employees at any level against whom the government won a contested case. They include Mr. Heinz, the former UBS employee.
One of the few successful government cases was overturned Monday. A federal appeals court tossed civil mortgage-fraud charges and a $1 million penalty against Rebecca Mairone, a former executive at Countrywide Financial Corp., now part of Bank of America Corp. The court also threw out a related $1.27 billion penalty against Bank of America. Representatives of Ms. Mairone and the bank this week welcomed the verdict, while the Justice Department, which brought the cases, declined to comment.
There are plenty of possible explanations for the small number of successful cases. For starters, much of the institutional conduct during and after the financial crisis didn't break the law, said law-enforcement officials. Even when the government has been able to prove illegal activity, it has rarely been traced to the upper echelons of big banks.
"The typical scenario is not that the bank has this plan for world domination being cooked up by the chairman and CEO," said Adam Pritchard, a law professor at the University of Michigan. "It's some midlevel employee trying to keep his job or his bonus, and as result the bank gets into trouble."
Lawmakers, consumer advocates and others have decried a lack of prosecutions for alleged misdeeds in the wake of the financial crisis.
Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have made the rarity of executive prosecutions a rallying cry in their campaigns and have promised to crack down. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, hasn't directly addressed Wall Street regulation in his campaign proposals.
The Journal combed through hundreds of court filings dating back more than seven years to review cases against the nation's largest banks—J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo & Co.—as well as four European banks with large U.S. operations: Barclays PLC, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG and UBS. The Journal's analysis focused on how often individuals were charged in cases brought against banks. It didn't look at cases against bankers in which the firm itself wasn't charged.
Commenting on the Journal's findings, an SEC spokesman said the agency brings charges against individuals whenever the evidence supports it. In the past five years, 80% of what the SEC calls its "independent" cases—stripping out various routine enforcement actions—have included charges against individuals, the spokesman said. A CFTC spokesman declined to comment.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said "cherry-picking cases against a handful of banks based on size is an inadequate measure" of its efforts to address individual misconduct at financial firms. The department "does not bring cases based on the size of an institution, but on the facts and evidence of misconduct at companies large and small," the spokeswoman added.
There is little data on how cases against banks compare with those against other types of companies. One study, by Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia, looked at settlements that companies of all kinds had struck with the Justice Department from 2001 to 2014 to resolve criminal charges without suffering the stigma of a corporate conviction. His research found that individuals were charged in only about a third of these deals, known as deferred prosecution or nonprosecution agreements.
The trend was even more pronounced last year, Mr. Garrett found. Individuals were charged in only five of the 103 deferred prosecution or nonprosecution pacts, partly a reflection of the large number of cases against Swiss banks, he said.
The Journal's analysis found that about half of the 47 bank employees charged since 2009 held junior or midlevel jobs—vice presidents, financial advisers, private bankers and managing directors. Most had quit or been fired before the bank was charged, sometimes years earlier.
In 2012, a New York jury convicted Mr. Heinz, now 43 years old, and two colleagues of rigging a bidding process in which banks competed for contracts to invest proceeds from bonds issued by towns and cities. Prosecutors said the three men steered financial contracts to their friends in exchange for kickbacks and other favors, resulting in cities and towns paying millions more for the deals than they needed to.
Mr. Heinz, a vice president on UBS's municipal-bond reinvestment desk, was sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $400,000 fine.
His lawyer, Marc Mukasey of Greenberg Traurig LLP, said the government "tends to go after the low-hanging fruit, and they bully a lot of people into settlements or into testifying in a way that helps their case." He said Mr. Heinz had been doing his job in good faith, when the government "decided to criminalize something that had previously never been criminalized."
The most senior banker charged in the reviewed cases was Gary Crittenden, former chief financial officer of Citigroup. The bank's negotiations with the SEC related to his 2010 case show how the pressure on all parties to reach a settlement—rather than face expensive litigation, with the risk of losing—can affect cases against individuals.
Citigroup tried to "use whatever leverage they had" during the settlement talks to get the government to "lay off the individuals," one unnamed SEC official said, according to a report in 2011 by the regulator's inspector general. The agency was planning fraud charges in the 2010 case against Mr. Crittenden, who had left Citigroup by then, and another executive who was still with the bank, in parallel with a $75 million pact with the bank to resolve allegations investors were misled about its subprime-mortgage exposure.
After Mr. Crittenden refused any settlement that included fraud charges, the SEC agreed to bring the less serious charges, the report said.
The two men paid a total of $180,000 to settle their cases, without admitting liability. Mr. Crittenden's lawyer didn't respond to requests for comment.
Going after junior staff can create its own difficulties. Judy Wolf was a compliance officer at Wells Fargo, which in 2014 paid the SEC $5 million to resolve civil charges it lacked adequate controls to prevent one of its brokers from insider trading. Soon after, the SEC charged Ms. Wolf with altering a document during the agency's investigation, to make a review she had done appear more thorough than it was.
Dismissing the case last year, an SEC administrative law judge said Wells Fargo "clearly had much deeper and more systemic problems" than one employee who "notably low-ranking…relatively low-paid, supervised no one, and worked in a cubicle."
A representative for Wells Fargo declined to comment, as did Ms. Wolf's lawyer.
Last fall, the Justice Department renewed its efforts to charge individuals in corporate cases. New guidelines recommend that prosecutors only give a company credit for cooperation if it turns over information on employees.
"It probably comes too late to be of much consequence in cases growing out of the financial crisis," said U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, who has criticized the lack of charges against executives in high-profile cases against banks. "Hopefully, it will be of more importance going forward."
Write to Jean Eaglesham at firstname.lastname@example.com and Anupreeta Das at firstname.lastname@example.com
HARTFORD, Conn. —A Connecticut commission has approved a $22 million loan and grant package to help the world's largest hedge fund upgrade its offices.
The Bond Commission approved the package by a 7-2 vote Friday.
Republican legislative leaders have questioned why Bridgewater Associates should receive the funding when state programs that serve vulnerable citizens are being cut in the state's new budget. The firm manages approximately $150 billion in investments for institutional clients.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, said it is a matter of competing with other states and noted incentives offered by Massachusetts recently helped to lure General Electric away from Connecticut.
Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Catherine Smith says the package is a great investment that will create 750 new, well-paying jobs and retain 1,400 existing jobs.
—Copyright 2016 Associated Press
By Timothy Puko
Natural gas prices inched higher on Friday, with hot weather raising expectations for demand.
Futures for July delivery settled up 3.8 cents, or 1.7%, at $2.169 a million British thermal units. June's contract expired on Thursday at $1.963/mmBtu, a new one-month low. The July contract hasn't fallen that far and has pushed front-month prices back up toward a four-month high as it has become the nearest-term contract.
Summer prices are often higher because the season's heat typically brings strong demand for gas to fuel power plants, as people use more air conditioning. High temperatures from Washington to Boston are likely to approach or surpass 90-degrees Fahrenheit during the next three days, far above normal, according to Weather Services International in Andover, Mass.
"I turned on my air two days ago, and I imagine there's a billion other people doing the same thing," said Bob Yawger, director of the futures division at Mizuho Securities USA Inc.
Some forecasts show near-normal and above-normal temperatures across the country into mid-June. That would limit the weekly surpluses of gas going into storage in the weeks to come. A smaller weekly surplus could help ease a glut leftover from the winter and keep prices in the upper part of their recent trading range, Tim Evans, analyst at Citi Futures Perspective in New York said in a note.
However, some other weather forecasts show cooler temperatures in the weeks to come. MDA Weather Services in Maryland is forecasting temperatures three to five degrees below normal across the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and New England States from June 6 to June 10, which could potentially sap demand for natural gas-fired electric power.
That could send prices lower. Government data released on Thursday had shown the glut, as of last week, keeping storage levels at 2.8 trillion cubic feet, 37% above levels from a year ago and the five-year average for the same week.
July futures finished the week down 3.8 cents, or 1.7%, largely because those high storage levels are limiting any urgency to buy, analysts and traders have said.
"The record-high inventory surplus is shrinking, but remains large," Credit Suisse analysts said in a report on natural gas dated May 26 and released to reporters on Friday. Because of the large surplus, the "season is shaping up as ugly as expected, low prices locked in."
Write to Timothy Puko at firstname.lastname@example.com
By Maureen Farrell, Dana Cimilluca
Another big name Wall Street firm is expected to launch an acquisition vehicle that would give it a "blank check" to make deals.
Centerview Capital Holdings LLC, the private-equity arm of mergers-and-acquisitions advisory firm Centerview Partners, is planning to launch a blank-check company that would buy consumer-products companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Blank-check companies raise money in public offerings to spend on future acquisitions.
Jim Kilts, a Centerview Capital partner and former Gillette Co. chief executive, is expected to help lead the venture, which could launch as soon as July, the people said. Centerview will seek to raise about $300 million in the offering, one of the people said.
Centerview has tapped Deutsche Bank AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to underwrite the deal, according to people familiar with the offering.
Special-purpose acquisition companies, as they are also known, are making a comeback during an otherwise lackluster IPO market, and some well known names on Wall Street are joining the wave.
Centerview Partners, founded by investment bankers Blair Effron and Robert Pruzan, has advised on some of the largest M&A deals of the past decade, including General Electric Co.'s sale of roughly $200 billion in GE Capital assets and Time Warner Cable Inc.'s $55 billion mergerwith Charter Communications Inc.
Mr. Kilts joined Centerview in 2006, shortly after the advisory firm's launch, to build out its private-equity arm. Centerview Capital now has roughly $500 million in committed capital, according to its website.
SPACs raised $3.9 billion in 20 deals in 2015, their busiest year since before the financial crisis, according to Dealogic. So far this year, five SPACs have raised roughly $1.5 billion in public offerings.
Landcadia Holdings Inc., a blank-check company formed by the CEOs of Jefferies Group LLC and Landry's Inc., this week raised $250 million in an IPO for possible acquisitions in the dining, hospitality, entertainment and gaming industries, according to regulatory filings. Last week, a blank-check company run by former Blackstone Group LP partner Chinh Chu and Fidelity National Financial Inc. Chairman William Foley raised $1.12 billion, including $515 million from a private group of investors.
Private-equity firms have been particularly active in the SPAC market, as both buyers and sellers. TPG launched a SPAC in 2015, and earlier this year it sold a majority stake in one of its portfolio companies to a blank-check company controlled by billionaire investor Wilbur Ross. Energy-focused Riverstone Holdings LLC owns 20% of a SPAC launched in February to buy up oil and gas assets.
Because the companies have no operations at first, investors who buy SPAC shares are betting on the investing prowess of their sponsors and their target industries.
The Centerview SPAC will target consumer-products companies, an area of strength for Mr. Kilts. He sold Gillette to Procter & Gamble Co. in 2005 in a deal valued at roughly $54 billion, creating the world's largest consumer-products enterprise.
Write to Maureen Farrell at email@example.com and Dana Cimilluca at firstname.lastname@example.com
By Christian Berthelsen
U.S. bond yields were a bit higher Friday after the revised look at first-quarter economic growth came in largely in line with expectations.
Yields on the U.S. 10-year Treasury inched up 0.1% to 1.83% in early trading. Bonds prices, which move inversely to yields, dipped as stocks rose. Trading was light in a shortened session ahead of the long Memorial Day holiday weekend.
The Commerce Department revised its estimate of first-quarter U.S. economic growth upward to 0.8% from its earlier assessment of 0.5%. The increase fell short of the 1% growth rate projected in a survey of economists by The Wall Street Journal.
The improved growth outlook shows the first three months of the year weren't as weak as previously thought, and dovetails with other recent evidence that the U.S. economic recovery, while still weak, continues apace.
At the same time, the main drivers of the gains in growth were a rise in inventories and a decline in the U.S. trade gap with the rest of the world, factors that were already known.
Personal consumption growth of 1.9% was unrevised, falling short of economists' expectations.
"Since the move was largely in line with consensus, we're not surprised to see a limited impact on Treasurys," brokerage CRT Capital said in a note.
Traders were looking ahead to a speech by Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen at Harvard later in the day for more direction in the market. Investors have been snapping up Treasurys amid mounting indications that the Fed, noting growing signals of strength in the U.S. economy, will raise interest rates sooner rather than later.
The market is assigning a 28% probability of a rate increase at its June meeting, and a 57% likelihood of an increase at its July meeting, according to CME Group data. Though those numbers have inched downward in recent days, but they are up from just 4% in early May.
Write to Christian Berthelsen at email@example.com
By Georgi Kantchev, Timothy Puko
Oil prices fell further below the key $50 threshold Friday, as investors took profits from the recent rally and the dollar strengthened.
Trading volume was among the lowest for any day since Christmas, with Monday's U.S. Memorial Day holiday limiting activity. Many traders simply wanted to get out of the market to limit their risk of exposure to any big or unforeseen changes, helping prices to fall slightly as bullish speculators who drove the rally sold to close their positions, brokers said.
"This is just dead," said Peter Donovan, broker for Liquidity Energy in New York. "We're not seeing a lot of aggressive activity right before the weekend, which is to be expected."
U.S. crude oil for July delivery settled down 15 cents, or 0.3%, at $49.33 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the week, it gained 92 cents, or 1.9%, marking its third-straight winning week.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, lost 27 cents, or 0.5%, to $49.32 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. It also held to gains for a third straight week, up 60 cents, or 1.2%, for this week and up 8.7% for the three-week winning streak.
U.S. oil breached $50 a barrel Thursday for the first time since October. Analysts now wonder whether Friday's fall is a temporary pullback or indicative of a market still facing a problem with oversupply.
"Speculators are clearly very cautious at these price levels," said David Hufton of PVM brokerage, adding that some Canadian production might return after outages due to wildfires. "Then there is dollar strength to consider with a Federal Reserve hike in June back on the table."
The Wall Street Journal Dollar Index, which tracks the dollar against a basket of other currencies, rose 0.6% Friday. As oil is priced in dollars, its price often falls as the dollar rises because it becomes more expensive for holders of other currencies as the greenback appreciates.
Oil prices have bounced back from the decade-lows of below $30 that they hit earlier this year. The rally has been fueled by a combination of supply disruptions and a continued fall in U.S. oil output.
Despite the recent retreat, U.S. crude is still up nearly 90% from its 13-year low in February, the sharpest rise since an increase of 92% from February to May of 2009.
Still, some analysts say disruptions are mostly temporary, meaning many of the lost barrels will be back.
"Expecting a persisting supply glut and fearing the excessively bullish sentiment, we see more downside than upside from today's prices and maintain our cautious view," said Norbert Rücker, head of commodities research at Julius Baer.
Production by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is also on the rise. UBS analysts forecast that OPEC's production will exceed 33 million barrels a day this summer.
In a meeting in Doha in mid-April, a group of OPEC and non-OPEC members, including heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Russia, failed to agree on a production cap. The next OPEC meeting is scheduled for Thursday in Vienna.
"We don't expect OPEC producers to come to any agreement at the coming meeting in Vienna and expect Gulf countries to ramp up production," UBS said in a report. "This return of disrupted supply and OPEC's increasing of production lay the foundation for a wider market surplus, and for prices to fall back below $40 in the short run."
The market did pare losses late in the day after the latest U.S. oil-rig count showed two fewer rigs drilling for oil. Baker Hughes Inc., which tracks the data, said 316 oil rigs are active, down from 1,609 at the peak in October 2014. Many traders and analysts trade the rig count as a rough proxy for production, and some expect the falling number of rigs will help cut U.S. oil output and help end the oversupply that has brought prices down from above $100 a barrel two years ago.
Gasoline futures settled up 1.24 cents, or 0.8%, at $1.6319 a gallon. It still finished down for the week by 0.37 cent, or 0.2%, snapping a two-week winning streak.
Diesel futures fell 0.73 cent, or 0.5%, to $1.494 a gallon. It gained 0.4 cent, or 0.3%, on the week, its third-straight weekly gain. Diesel is up nearly 12% in those three weeks.
–Ezequiel Minaya and Jenny W. Hsu contributed to this article.
Write to Georgi Kantchev at email@example.com
By Spencer Jakab
Define "reasonable." The latest accusation in the troubled merger between Energy Transfer Equity and Williams Cos isn't.
ETE, which claimed earlier this month that it "can't close" the agreement and is being sued by Williams for some of its actions, filed a counterclaim. It says Williams breached the agreement; that shouldn't only invalidate it, but force Williams to pay a hefty breakup fee.
The main offense is failure to use Williams's "reasonable best efforts" to complete the deal. But ETE should be worrying about how a court may one day interpret that term. ETE clearly regrets the $6 billion in cash it threw in as a sweetener now that sector values have crashed.
ETE claims it can't get a necessary tax opinion by the June 28 deadline. But it has almost no legal wiggle room to pull out except, perhaps, by saying it used its "reasonable best efforts" to get that opinion.
One way ETE alleges Williams has attempted to thwart the deal was its refusal to cooperate with a dilutive public issue of convertible preferred shares. ETE sold some anyway to "accredited investors" with over half going to boss Kelcy Warren. That issue's terms are seen by some as a way to insulate buyers from a likely cut in regular cash distributions.
ETE says the deal was a step to raise cash for the merger, but it didn't raise much. Since Williams is keener on the deal happening than ETE, thwarting a legitimate exercise to raise cash its shareholders will receive makes no sense.
Instead, it appears ETE saw a tactic to make the deal less attractive to Williams shareholders so that they walk away. That's what a reasonable observer would say.
Write to Spencer Jakab at email@example.com
Investors these days aren't bearish or bullish – they're confused.
On Friday's MoneyBeat podcast, we look at the results of the latest investor sentiment poll, and find that years of crisis, government half-measures and stagnating economies have left investors thoroughly confused about where to turn next.
The latest poll from the American Association of Individual Investors showed that the average investors is unusually vexed. Most are neither bearish nor bullish, but in a state that can best be described as "I don't know."
How do you invest in an "I don't know" world? Barron's Jack Otter and MarketWatch's Chuck Jaffe offer their thoughts on how investors should navigate these uncertain waters.
Subscribe to the MoneyBeat podcast at wsj.com or on iTunes.
By Ezequiel Minaya
The U.S. oil-rig count fell by two to 316 in the latest reporting week, according to oil-field services company Baker Hughes Inc., keeping up a broad trend of declines.
The number of U.S. oil-drilling rigs, viewed as a proxy for activity in the sector, has fallen sharply since oil prices began to tumble in 2014. The number of oil rigs in the U.S. peaked at 1,609 in October 2014.
According to Baker Hughes, the number of U.S. gas rigs rose by two in the latest week to 87.
The U.S. offshore-rig count was 24 in the latest week, unchanged from last week and down five from a year earlier.
Oil prices fell further below the key $50 threshold Friday, as investors took profits from the recent rally and the dollar strengthened.
U.S. crude was recently down 0.4% to $49.27 a barrel.
Write to Ezequiel Minaya at firstname.lastname@example.com
By Christian Berthelsen, Ese Erheriene
Gold prices fell to their lowest level in more than three months Friday amid mounting evidence of improving economic growth in the U.S. that would strengthen the case for an interest-rate increase.
Gold futures for the most-actively traded August contract ended down 0.3% at $1,216.70 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange, marking an eighth straight losing session. It was the lowest settlement in gold since Feb. 22.
Gold surged more than 20% to start the year but has since fallen 6% from those lofty levels.
Gold is often viewed as a haven investment for times of economic weakness and financial market volatility, and jitters about growth to start the year fed its rally. But more recent data suggest early 2016 weakness was temporary, and more recent data indicate the U.S. recovery, while weak, continues apace.
Those recent data points have strengthened the hand of the Federal Reserve to further raise interest rates from rock-bottom levels. Rising rates tend to weigh on precious metals, as gold struggles to compete as an attractive investment with yield-bearing securities such as bonds. Markets have been assigning a higher probability of a rate increase at the Fed's June meeting, now viewed as a 28% likelihood compared with a 4% likelihood early in the month.
Further data points on Friday could lend more support to the Fed's plans. The Commerce Department revised its estimate of first-quarter U.S. economic growth up to 0.8% from 0.5%; while the measure fell short of expectations, it showed the early months of the year weren't as bad as previously believed. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey came in with its strongest results in nearly a year, at 94.7 in May compared with April's 89.
With speculative investment in the gold market at its most bullish stance in nearly five years, analysts say the market may be poised for a fall as investors take profits and close out holdings after a long run-up.
"The high level of speculative interest and renewed interest rate hike speculation in the U.S. makes gold susceptible to a price correction in the short term," Commerzbank said in a note.
Meanwhile, gold prices were also capped by a stronger dollar, which makes the metal more expensive for buyers using foreign currencies. The WSJ Dollar Index was recently up 0.4%.
Though some analysts believe gold prices could dip back below $1,200 an ounce, lower prices also could attract bargain hunters to the market.
"Gold is already starting to offer reasonable value at these lower levels and any further weakness would serve as a good buying opportunity," said UBS.
In other precious metals markets, silver ended down 0.5% at $16.269 an ounce, platinum ended 1.4% lower at $982.20 an ounce and palladium fell 0.8% to $539.00 an ounce.
Write to Christian Berthelsen at firstname.lastname@example.com and Ese Erheriene at email@example.com
By Abheek Bhattacharya
A key concern about Chinese firms bidding for U.S. assets used to be politics. Zoomlion Heavy Industries Science and Technology is reminding investors of a more ordinary concern—that the Chinese firm abruptly terminates its bid, for whatever reason.
Zoomlion scrapped its acquisition of U.S. equipment maker Terex Friday. Recall that the Chinese machinery maker was the one who interrupted Terex's 2015 all-share merger with Finnish peer Konecranes by first offering cash worth $30 a share, and then $31 a share. That second $3.4 billion bid was about 60% higher than Konecranes' offer.
Terex responded earlier this month by canceling the Konecranes merger, and instead announcing a sale of only its port and industrial-crane segment to the Finns. That is the asset Konecranes wanted the most, and the one whose political sensitivity may have created the biggest headache for Zoomlion.
That move seemed designed to make all parties happy. Yet Zoomlion now says it couldn't agree with Terex "on the crucial terms," without offering any detail.
One theory is that price suddenly emerged as a sore spot. After adjusting for the reduced value of Terex after its Konecranes side deal, Terex wanted a slightly higher offer because its side deal had avoided the need for paying Konecranes the termination fee the previous merger required, according to a person familiar with the situation. Zoomlion, on the other hand, wanted to offer slightly less on account of tax complications as well as Terex's terrible first-quarter results.
If Zoomlion is balking over what probably doesn't amount to more than $1 a share, this appears to be a pretext for re-examining for what was always a rich deal. Zoomlion's $31-bid valued Terex at 22.8 times 2016 earnings during an equipment-industry downturn. At that valuation, compared with Terex's 10-year average of 15.7 times, it isn't surprising the buyer got cold feet.
Another theory is that Zoomlion, already heavily indebted, didn't get its financing in order. If that is the case, being partly owned by a provincial Chinese government didn't provide a backstop.
Terex executives have seemed concerned about Zoomlion's financing before. After Terex announced its Konecranes side deal, it gave Zoomlion two weeks to make a fully financed $31 bid for the whole company including the port and industrial crane segment, if it wanted to—likely an attempt to force the Chinese to line up the dollars.
Zoomlion's Hong Kong shares fell slightly on the deal. Though they don't have to indebt themselves further, these shareholders in sum are worse off. They don't get access to Terex's world-class crane technology, which China lacks. Meanwhile, Konecranes shares rose 4.5% early Friday, investors perhaps sensing that Terex could come back to discuss a full merger.
The surest loser is Terex, no matter the reason it lost out on the deal. Coming a few months after Chinese insurer Anbang mysteriously dropped its bid for Starwood Hotels & Resorts, too, other acquisition targets might want to grill their Chinese suitors on whether they have the cash, or are truly willing to pay the price.
Write to Abheek Bhattacharya at email@example.com


text:
Columnist Carrie Dennett provides insight into the "Everything in moderation" nutritional dogma.
"Everything in moderation."
Can you remember a time before that expression existed? I can't. That simple phrase has been used as shorthand for a balanced diet for so long that it's become nutritional dogma. Here's the problem: "Moderation" doesn't mean what you think it means. Too many people think they eat in moderation when, in reality, their eating habits are off the rails.
I lay the blame on one major fallacy and one serious miscalculation.
The fallacy: "Everything in moderation" gives the impression that all foods are nutritionally equal. Well, they aren't. You should not be eating moderate amounts of vegetables and moderate amounts of dessert. You should be eating abundant amounts of vegetables and tiny amounts of dessert.
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The miscalculation: People don't know how much they eat. Unless you keep a food journal or otherwise track what you eat, you lose the big picture of what your food pattern looks like over the course of a week, a month or a year. That makes it shockingly easy to think you eat more healthfully than you really do.
You tell yourself, "I only eat doughnuts once in a while," forgetting that you also eat chips once in a while, cheesecake once in a while, and so on. Add up too many once-in-a-whiles, and you get a total consumption of fatty, sugary, salty, calorie-rich, nutrient-poor food that is far from moderate.
Of course, quantity includes portion size, and that's another area where we can easily lose perspective. If you're eating too much food, you are not eating in moderation.
It's possible to overeat healthy foods, too, especially those that are more calorie-dense, like nuts, nut butters and whole-grain breads and pastas.
Learning proper serving sizes — and how to measure them — is one way to rein in portion distortion.
You can also start paying attention to why you're eating. Are you eating because you are truly hungry and it's been at least two or three hours since you last ate? Or are you eating simply because the food tastes good, or because you're sad, bored or tired? That could be a problem.
"Everything in moderation" often goes hand-in-hand with "There are no good or bad foods." It's an important notion, because many of us tend to feel virtuous when we eat salad but guilty when we eat a whole pint of ice cream. I agree that no one's feelings of self-worth should be based on how healthfully they eat. However, from a nutritional point of view, there are definitely foods that are good for your body and foods that are bad for your body.
If bad foods make up too large a chunk of your total diet, sooner or later it will take a toll on your waistline and, worse, your health.
While we're on the subject, you've probably heard the advice to "eat a variety of foods." It's excellent advice that often gets misinterpreted. The idea is to eat a variety of healthy foods, not simply a variety of foods. Eating a variety of junk food can leave you feeling run down. Eating a nice mix of healthy fruits, vegetables, whole grains and protein foods (lean meat, poultry, fish and seafood, beans, eggs, nuts, soy or dairy) will help you get enough of the nutrients you need to look and feel your best. Isn't that what we all want?
Next time: The (leafy) green revolution.
Carrie Dennett: email@example.com; Dennett is a graduate student in the Nutritional Sciences Program at UW; her blog is nutritionbycarrie.com.
Carrie Dennett: email@example.com; Dennett is a graduate student in the Nutritional Sciences Program at UW; her blog is nutritionbycarrie.com.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
- Costa RicaAgricultureFunding via EDESA
NubiaCosta RicaAgricultureFunding via EDESA
Joselyn EsterCosta RicaFoodFunding via EDESA
María Teresa
Although this is an individual loan, the community in which María and her family live is very close-knit and interdependent. Neighbors help and support one another by sharing experiences and expertise acquired over the years. All individual members of the Coquital community are dedicated to the improvement of living conditions for the region as a whole.
This loan will be used to finance the production of tabasco peppers. Specifically, the loan will be used to finance the purchase of a variety of seedlings and necessary agricultural nutrients, fertilizers and chemicals in order to ensure a healthy harvest. All laborial and logistical tasks associated with production will be carried out by María with the help of her family members in the region of Coquital de Los Chiles, located in the Northern Region of Costa Rica. María will need roughly one year before her peppers will reach maturity and be ready for harvest.
Piper and Capiscum Processors Compañía Agrícola Industrial, or, PROPICA is an international buyer and seller of chili pepper and ground pepper products. In cooperation with Fundación Mujer, PROPICA has guaranteed to purchase the agricultural products (the peppers) that are to be produced with the help of this loan. PROPICA acts as a guaranteed client for small agricultural producers in the area of Coquital, thus ensuring that their products will reach market.
In general, the work day is divided into mornings and afternoons. In the morning, the domestic tasks are carried out such as cooking, cleaning and caring for younger siblings. Afternoons are generally dedicated to harvest and planting, working the land as needed.
The main factor that has stood in the way of increasing her production levels has been the Costa Rican government and various other institutions. Formal banks, lending agencies and government bodies have failed to recognize the producers of the Coquital region as legitimate producers, worthy of financial and governmental support and services.
The collaboration of Fundación Mujer and PROPICA represents a unique opportunity to María, her family and community. By offering a source of start-up capital, and a guaranteed client to purchase what is produced, this is a chance to improve family and community standards of living. Above all, María wants to take advantage of the current opportunity that has been presented. She wants to profit from this collaboration and see improvements in her neighborhood.
Additional Information
More information about this loan
In Costa Rica, funding for microfinance institutions is hard to come by, and many institutions find themselves having difficulty growing and reaching all the demand for loans that exist. Kiva works with Fundacion Mujer because it attends a very marginalized population in Costa Rica, with a specific focus on women. In addition to the loan, Fundacion Mujer provides specialized training programs for their borrowers on everything from computer classes to salon training. Because of the difficulty in obtaining capital in Costa Rica, Fundacion Mujer cannot serve all the women that need loans. Therefore Kiva plays a unique role in helping Fundacion Mujer grow its portfolio and reach borrowers it otherwise would not be able to.
About Fundacion Mujer:Fundación Mujer is an organization specializing in the financial and personal development of female entrepreneurs in Costa Rica. They seek to reach underserved populations that may include indigenous communities, immigrants, refugees, victims of domestic violence or women living with HIV/AIDS. Fundación Mujer offers courses in both business and personal development, as well as training in concrete skills such as sewing and other crafts.
About Costa Rica
8View loans »
Success!! The loan was 100% repaid
- Repayment Term
- 12 months (Additional Information)
- Repayment Schedule
- Irregularly
- Pre-Disbursed:
- Jun 11, 2010
- Listed
- Jun 18, 2010
- Currency Exchange Loss:
- Possible
- Ended:
- Mar 24, 2011


text:
A businessman from Greenville was involved in an accident on Interstate 95 that killed one person and injured himself and three others.
Highway Patrol troopers say a woman from South Carolina died when a car driven by 60-year-old J. Dorson White of Greenville, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at East Carolina Bank, crashed into the back of her vehicle Sunday night in Johnston County near mile marker 97.
Troopers say White and his wife suffered from minor injuries, as did two people in the other vehicle.
Authorities have not said what led to the crash. No charges were filed.


text:
With the welcome news that reports of a plane crash off Wales was a false alarm, we are now closing the live blog.
Thanks for following.
Locals have been left relieved that the search was called off - and are now even having a joke about it.
Local man Julian Phillips heard the planes overhead but was relieved the search was stood down after a worrying wait.
He joked: "Maybe a few people had a few too many beers tonight?
"But the truth is the sound that was made was not good and I think everyone is just very happy a military jet did not come down after all.
"That would have been horrible."
Meriel Murphy, 40, landlady of the Ship Inn in Trefin, said: "It is not uncommon to see jets flying low in this part of the world but not like tonight.
"Some people said it sounded like they were so low they were going to take their roofs off.
"Everyone has been stood outside for hours watching the search and just hoping everything was OK.
"Whatever the noise the plane was making was most people agree it did not sound healthy and then the large bang afterwards made everyone fear the worst, especially as they could not see any aircraft on the horizon."
Thankfully, it's now looking like a false alarm.
Coastguard teams in Pembrokeshire say they are calling off the search.
Earlier, the Ministry of Defence said all its aircraft were accounted for.
Residents in the village of Trefin in Pembrokeshire, south west Wales, heard a light aircraft circling overhead followed by a bang just after 7pm.
Sue Whitmore, who runs the Old School Hostel in Trefin, said she had heard what sounded like a light aircraft circling overhead.
She said other villagers had told her they had also heard an aircraft followed by a bang.
Good evening and welcome to our live blog.
A huge search is underway after reports that a plane has crashed off the Welsh coast.
Coastguard teams received reports that an aircraft may have ditched after a loud blast was heard shortly after 7pm.
Locals in Trefin had seen two jets flying low overhead. It was initially reported that the crash involved a military jet. However, the aircraft it not believed to be military.
A huge search and rescue operation off the coast of Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, is now underway.
The BBC has reported that a rescue helicopter from RAF Chivenor and two RNLI lifeboats are involved in the search.We will bring you the latest updates as we get them.


text:
Oklahoma Soccer Association
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US Youth Soccer
US Soccer
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Oklahoma Soccer Association
Score Sports
OSOI Oklahoma Sports Orthopedic Institute
Tulsa Roughnecks fc
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About Us
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Mission Statement
OSA Meeting Minutes
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CLASS of 2006
Joe-Max Moore
Inducted January 27, 2006
Joe-Max Moore, Oklahoma's first U.S. National Team player, grew up in Tulsa hanging around the Tulsa Roughnecks of the North American Soccer League and playing for Milan Dovedan, who "influenced me most as a coach," says Joe-Max. Because his father, Carl, owned the Roughnecks, Joe-Max's early years were spent with international players from the NASL at his Tulsa home until the family moved to Irvine, California when he was 14.
While in California, Joe-Max attended Irvine High School and was a scholarship player at UCLA. In 1992, he scored a bending free-kick goal (a skill he would be noted for) against Italy in the Summer Olympics and began a decade of appearances with the United States Men's National Team. In 1993 he led the USA in scoring with 8 goals, the most ever by a US player, and in the '95 Copa America he converted his penalty kick in a shootout win over Mexico. Joe-Max scored 4 goals for the US in 1996 in qualifying play for the 98 World Cup and by the 2002 World Cup he had played in two of the USA's first three World Cup appearances in nearly 30 years.
On the international stage, Joe-Max left the US in1994 to pursue opportunities overseas, joining
FC Saarbruecken
in Germany where he scored a club-best 13 goals in just 25 games. Returning home in 1996, Joe-Max joined the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer and through 1999 was the club's all-time leading scorer and named MVP in 1996. In 2000, Joe-Max signed with Everton in the English Premier League and scored 8 goals in his first season. During his three years with the Everton squad, Joe-Max played in two FA Cup and scored goals in back-to-back matches against Derby County and Leeds United.
Rejoining the Revolution in 2003, Joe-Max played through the 2004 season and scored 41 career goals with 35 assists, a Revolution record. In January 2005, Joe-Max announced his retirement from professional soccer. His 24 goals for the US ranked him third in national history at the time of his retirement.
The future holds possibilities of coaching and continued charity work for the former Oklahoman who remains involved with Special Olympics. Joe-Max enjoys his retirement at home in Florida with his wife, Martha, and his four-year-old son, Tommy, who is enjoying the benefits of a World Cup veteran as a coach.
Juergen Gohlke
Inducted January 27, 2006
In 1945, a young Juergen Gohlke left his native Germany to immigrate to Oklahoma. Arriving in Shawnee, where his sponsoring family lived, Juergen began familiarizing himself with not only a new family but also a new country and state. After graduating from Shawnee High School, Juergen began working for Shawnee Steel, a job he would hold until leaving the state in 1996 for Florida.
The state of soccer in the late 1950's and early 1960's in Oklahoma was one of pickup games in and around college towns and metropolitan areas. In Shawnee, Juergen found a group of college players from around the world playing his favorite sport of soccer. With the help of Father Paul Zahler, Juergen began forming teams to play at St. Gregory's (which in the early days was a high school and then a two-year college) and surrounding colleges and universities.
"Most of the soccer players I worked with," says Juergen, "were from private schools in the Tulsa and Oklahoma City areas as well as from New York and South America. The local athletes at OBU (where he coached for several years) and St. Gregory's who had little soccer background loved the game, but we had to teach them how to play it. For most of them it was an unknown game."
During the 1970's, Juergen would play, coach, and referee games all in the same weekend in the fledgling Oklahoma Soccer Football Association that would eventually become Frontier Country Soccer Association and Oklahoma Soccer Association. Because Juergen was so well organized, Father Paul asked him to become the secretary of the new association - Oklahoma Soccer Association. Juergen held the office for nine years during the tenure of Father Paul as president. One of Juergen's significant contributions to Oklahoma Soccer was his writing of the organization's first constitution and bylaws to govern soccer development across the state.
In addition to other duties, Juergen organized workshops for both referees and coaches in Oklahoma and continued to officiate until the early 1980's. Such interest in the sport was fueled by Juergen's dream to see Oklahoma become a leader in soccer. Nearly forty years later, Oklahoma Soccer Association is an example of his determination and leadership.
Walter Schnoor
Inducted January 27, 2006
Walter Schnoor arrived in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1958 to work as VW mechanic. Unable to speak English, he rented an apartment at the YMCA in downtown Tulsa and began to learn the language by attending movies. He had seen versions of "From Here to Eternity" and "The Glenn Miller Story" dubbed in German while living in his hometown of Kiel. "The first words I learned," says Walter, "were 'Forget it!' and 'coffee and donuts.'" Soon he had purchased an automobile and furthered his language studies by going to drive-in movies and making himself learn 20 words of English a day. After a period of time he rented a small apartment and the owner of the apartment said he should meet her niece. The blind date led to marriage to his wife of 40 plus years, Peggy. The Schnoors have three daughters – Pat, Carrie, and Christi, as well as Walter's son, Rick. Walter and Peggy have four grandchildren Georg, Alan, Katie, and Samantha.
In 1964, Walter found soccer players practicing at Will Rogers High School and he began playing his favorite sport again. He had been selected as a professional player for the Hamburg SV team, but his father would not sign the necessary papers and Walter became a mechanic instead. Walter's love of the game and organizational skills came to the front when he helped organized the Tulsa International Soccer Club in 1967 that provided the impetus for adult soccer in Tulsa. From the TISC group of international players came future youth coaches, referees, and administrators and the nucleus of Green Country Soccer and eventually Oklahoma Soccer Association. One method of attracting Oklahomans to watch soccer was to sponsor exhibition matches and Walter helped organize two games against the Chicago Sting in 1980. A group of Oklahoma City all-stars played against the Sting in Moore and the following week played a group of Tulsa all-stars in Tulsa.
Walter's playing skills led him to participate in the USSF Amateur Cup, the Dallas German American Club, and the GCSA Adult League. He also found time to referee both youth and adult matches during this time.
Walter decided that for soccer to grow in Oklahoma, it would need a goal such as acceptance as a varsity sport in high school and college. To that end, he began a kids' league and coached young players. Walter encouraged adult coaches to form youth teams and coach in Green Country. By now, Walter owned his own VW shop and his business sense spilled over to the administration of the early years of Green Country. He began contacting his customers and promoting the idea of soccer at Tulsa University.
With the help of Getty Oil, Walter founded the TU soccer program and became its first coach. For several years, the team would pile in Walter's blue VW bus and tour the state playing matches. Soon scholarships were being offered to play college soccer and get an education. Walter is most proud of his students who took advantage of their soccer skills to get a degree.
As the state's first head coach and one of its early players, Walter continues to support and enjoy the game he first played years ago in his native Germany. However, his little VW shop is no longer. Just as Oklahoma's soccer program has moved on, so has Walter. His German Motor
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2old2play is going through some massive changes in the coming months and we really want the communities help. In due time we're going to share all these changes with the community, but before that I would love to get some feed back from people who still visit 2o2p on a regular basis.
Our goal remains in being a central place for older gamers to meet, chat about games, and find others to play those games online with. With that in mind, we know we have had many missteps since V2 and that our overall design is not nearly inclusive enough for new people.
So, if you have ideas of your own or just want to voice an opinion, please do so here. If you want to be involved at a much higher level, then I encourage you send me an email at email@example.com and list your site username and any more info there.
Thanks again for supporting 2o2p and sticking with our community for so long. Game on!


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You can make money online by playing games. Farm Gold is a great site that you can log in to and play fun games during the course of the day in your spare time. There are many games that you can choose from to make this a profitable and fun experience. Before you set off, please head to this web page Tote.
Start out small when you want to make money online, to minimize potential losses. For example, something that looks promising could turn out to be a bust and you dont want to lose a lot of time or money. Do a single taks, write just one article or order only one item until the site you choose proves to be safe and worthy.
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Try doing some surveys online. You will not make as much money as you would with some other types of online work. These surveys usually do not take long, and they usually just ask for your opinion. If you join a legitimate survey site, those cents can quickly add up to some extra cash.
Are you a good salesperson? Look into becoming an affiliate. In this line of work, you will earn money each time you sell a product that you have agreed to endorse. After joining an affiliate program, you will get a referral link. From there, you can begin selling products, either on your own website or on someone elses site.
Many people today are looking for different ways to supplement their income to help them earn a living, and one of those ways is through making money online. If this has been something that is drawing you to take a closer look at, then the following article is just for you! Keep reading for solid tips on how you can go about making money online. If you have a knack for writing, there are various internet portals that offer work for writers of all levels. Sites like iWriter and Write.com allow you to write for various sources who need well-written content. Make your writing skill work for you and you can generate much needed income. Have you dreamed about quitting your regular job and working online? If so, you have come to the right place. There are plenty of people out there who no longer have to punch a time clock. Learn about the ways that you can start making money online. Eventually, you may even be able to quit your regular job.
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YAMAGATA — A 39-year-old man was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in prison for stealing Peko-chan dolls, the trademark character for major confectioner Fujiya Co., that are traded at high prices among collectors.
The Yamagata District Court ruled that Hiroyuki Cho ordered a collaborator to steal 15 life-size dolls, worth about 1.1 million yen in total, from restaurants and shops in Gunma, Saitama and Yamagata prefectures from May to July last year.
Cho, unemployed, lives in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture.
Prosecutors had demanded 11 years in prison as violence was used in some of the attempts to steal the dolls.
Cho had pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer argued in court that an acquaintance of Cho's was solely responsible for the thefts. This man, Tetsuji Shibuya, has already been sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison.
But presiding Judge Takeshi Kaneko ruled that Cho was the mastermind behind the crimes, noting that he had given instructions on how to steal the dolls in e-mail messages.
The judge also said Cho repeatedly made irrational excuses for his role in the thefts, and has shown no sign of repentance. As for motive, the court ruled that Cho turned to stealing the dolls, which he had been selling at flea markets, because they became increasingly hard to obtain.
Although Peko-chan dolls are not for sale, they are traded among avid fans, and life-size ones can reportedly fetch more than 100,000 yen.
The mascot of the Fujiya cakes and sweets chain is a chubby girl whose tongue sticks out of the side of her mouth. The confectioner was founded in Tokyo in 1910, and Peko-chan made her first appearance 45 years later. The dolls are displayed at nearly all 950 Fujiya stores in Japan.


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Hello to all,
I have apple iphone 3gs mobile phone. I am looking for Car Charger with Audio Out for my iphone, but I unable to find it. The one that is found on the apple website is only used for charging. I want car Charger with Audio Out also. If anyone know anything about it then please help me.
Thank you.


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A county leader has been spreading happiness this holiday season to unsuspecting people.
Susan Allen, a Cleveland County commissioner, said she started performing random acts of kindness throughout the county in December.
�The idea came from a friend of mine who lost her son two years ago,� Allen said. �In his memory, they asked everyone to perform a random act of kindness.�
Allen liked the idea and wanted to pass something good on to someone else.
The idea is if someone performs an act of kindness for you, that person turns around and pays it forward to someone else, Allen said.
�An example is I made a cake in memory of Jake, my friend�s son and gave it to the Boys and Girls Club,� Allen said. �They used that cake to help celebrate the AB Honor Roll students.�
She also paid for someone's meal in a restaurant drive-thru, and she made cards to distribute when others performed a random act of kindness.
�One man said it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him,� Allen said. �And all my friend did was buy him breakfast. Cashiers have thought it was really cool when I tell them I�m paying for the person behind me.�
Allen said she may extend her random acts of kindness through January.
�I like to give back to people, and thought this was a good thing to do during the holidays,� Allen said. �If something good happens to you, pass it on.�
Reach Jessica Pickens at 704-669-3332 or firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow on Twitter @StarJPickens.
Want to join or learn more?
"Like" Random Act of Kindness 2013 / Susan Allen on Facebook.
A movement of "random acts of kindness" has been popular locally and nationwide this holiday season. Know someone else who's spreading cheer through random kind acts? "Like" The Shelby Star on Facebook and share.
Location, ST | website.com


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Top Democratic Congressman Mocks Republican Failures To Win In California
"Kevin McCarthy has no credibility on that." Update: McCarthy responds
New York Congressman Steve Israel mocked Republican efforts to turn California into a red state, a campaign routinely hyped by Rep. Kevin McCarthy that has fallen dramatically short of its aims.
"Yeah that worked out really well for him in 2012. He lost six seats. That's really good" Israel, who is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said sarcastically in an interview with BuzzFeed Friday.
"He got wiped out. He got wiped out in California. Wiped. Out," Israel continued. "I understand that he has to say what he has to say, but he says it with such a sense of bravado that it just annoys me. I'm a huge Mets fans, it's like me telling you the Mets are going to win the World Series. Promise you the Mets are going to win the World Series. No, they are last place or second-to-last place. So Kevin McCarthy has no credibility on that."
All but one of the "Young Gun" candidates, McCarthy's pet program funded by the National Republican Congressional Committee, were defeated in 2012 in California. Republicans actually only lost four seats in California in last year's election, not six, as Israel said.
UPDATE: McCarthy spokesman Mike Long says in an email, "It's totally understandable for Steve Israel to lose his cool like that following the embarrassing recruiting job he's doing. Whip McCarthy would sympathize, but when he was NRCC recruitment chair in 2010 he knew what it took to win a majority in one cycle."
- Top Mexican soccer player Alan Pulido has been rescued after he was kidnapped outside of his hometown in Tamaulipas.
- Yep. Marco Rubio said he's sorry for implying Donald Trump has a small penis.
- Lights have turned Australia's most iconic buildings into seriously psychedelic works of art.


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LITS Student Employee Profile: Malosree Maitra on the LITS Web Team!
For seven of her eight very busy semesters at Mount Holyoke, Malosree Maitra has been a member of the LITS Web Team, tackling a wide variety of programming tasks, learning one new technology after another, and rising to every challenge we've presented her. We asked her to answer a few (Read more...)


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Different ways to count, but very close
"Ninety percent of American workers don't own their own business."
CBO's best guess
The CBO says that if you raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, "half a million people would lose their jobs."
— PunditFact
True of the mandate, and views of the law are becoming more negative
"Polls show Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to Obamacare, especially the individual mandate."
It may even be higher now
"A little less than 50 percent of the people in this country depend on some form of federal payment, some form of government benefit to help provide for them."
By the measure he uses, Santorum is pretty close
"When I was born, defense spending was 60 percent of the budget. It's now 17 percent."
Add "former" before "Romney adviser," and it would have gotten a True
"Romney adviser admits Romneycare was blueprint for Obamacare."
Several times
"Speaker Gingrich for 20 years supported a federal individual mandate" for health insurance.
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text:
Mitchell's Teacher Of The Year To Be Chosen Tonight.
Mitchell's Teacher of the Year will be chosen tonight at the Mitchell School District's Employee Recognition Banquet. The banquet begins at 6:30 at DWU's Sherman Center. L.B. Williams teacher Patty VerSteeg, Longfellow teacher Cathy VerSteeg, Gertie Belle Rogers teacher Sonya Fossum, Mitchell Middle School teacher Kathy Kramer, and Mitchell High School teacher Lisa Neugebauer are up for the award.


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Escondido, California Probate Lawyers and Law Firms
|» Step 1: Tell Us About Your Case
|» Step 2: Provide Contact Information & Submit
Start a Lawyer Search
Tell us about your case so that we can connect you with the right lawyers.
Law Offices of Ronald R. Webb
Estate Planning, Wills, Living Trust, Trust and Estate Administration, Probate, Guardianship and Conservatorship, Financial and Health Care Powers of Attorney.
Address: 16870 W. Bernardo Dr. Ste 400 - San Diego, CA 92127
Phone: (858) 558-1191
San Diego Probate Lawyer
Estate Planning Law Firm with an emphasis in Wills, Trusts, and Probate. Other areas of practice include administrative law invovling education and government agencies.
Address: 8880 Rio San Diego Drive Suite 800 - San Diego, CA 92108
Phone: 619-209-6019
The Weissler Law Group
San Diego Estate Planning, Elder Law & Asset Protection
Address: 2635 Camino Del Rio S Suite 301 - San Diego, CA 92108
Phone: (619) 281-1888


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internet project
Notes and Credits
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a free computer!*
if you have an idea or a bug, tell me about it and I will do my best. download and re-import after changing NOTHING but giving me credit for it so we can get this front-paged!
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The Fiesta Bowl will be asked to justify its inclusion in the Bowl Championship Series after organizers for the Arizona game fired president and CEO John Junker for "an apparent scheme" to reimburse employees for political contributions and "an apparent conspiracy" to cover it up.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Fiesta Bowl will be asked to justify its inclusion in the Bowl Championship Series after organizers for the Arizona game fired president and CEO John Junker for "an apparent scheme" to reimburse employees for political contributions and "an apparent conspiracy" to cover it up.
The Fiesta Bowl released a scathing internal report Tuesday.
The reimbursements, listed as at least $46,539, are an apparent violation of state campaign finance laws and the charter that allows the Fiesta Bowl its nonprofit status. The Arizona attorney general's office is conducting a probe of the matter.
The BCS reacted swiftly, saying it would undertake an investigation to "consider whether the Fiesta Bowl should remain a BCS bowl game or other appropriate sanctions."
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The Fiesta board of directors voted unanimously to fire Junker "for his improper and inappropriate activities documented" in the report.
Junker, in his ubiquitous bright yellow Fiesta Bowl sports jacket, had been the face of the event for three decades, leading it from an upstart event to one of the BCS giants. With an annual salary of about $600,000, he had been on paid administrative leave since Feb. 4 after the board said he failed to comply with two written directives to cooperate with the investigation.
The board said the probe uncovered "excessive compensation, nonbusiness and inappropriate expenditures and inappropriate gifts."
• Four former Auburn players — Chaz Ramsey, Troy Reddick, Stanley McClover and Raven Gray — appeared on "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" on HBO and said they received money from boosters during their time at the school. All four played during Tommy Tuberville's time as Auburn's coach.


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Croissant and Chocolate Bread Pudding
- Unsalted butter for the baking dish
- 6large egg yolks
- 2cups whole milk
- 1cup heavy cream
- 1cup granulated sugar
- 1teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/2teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 6 croissants, cut into 1-inch pieces (about 1 pound)
- 4ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into chunks
- Heat oven to 375° F. Butter an 8-inch square or other shallow 2-quart baking dish.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, milk, cream, sugar, vanilla, salt, and nutmeg. Add the croissants and chocolate and mix to combine.
- Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking dish and bake until set and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.


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Getting ready for IMA Summit – Selling and marketing in the new economy
The GCP staff is excited for all the insights, collaboration and networking to be had at the upcoming 12th annual IMA Executive Summit 2011, August 7-9. The theme: Learn, Connect, Benchmark and Deb Merkin, Ed Shulkin, Melina Balboni and Diane Freeland will be on-hand at the event.
GCP's Deb Merkin will moderate the panel: Challenges of Moving Bulk eCerts/mCerts Through the Distribution Pipeline. In this discussion, card experts will discuss the challenges and benefits to be gained by embracing the new technologies that promise to expand the incentive card market.
Panelists: Jonathan Treiber, RevTrax; Brian Rigney, CashStar; Joan Travelstead, National Gift Card; Kristen Thiry, Discover; Holly Schmackers, Fifth Third Bank and the moderator will be Deb Merkin, Chief Operating Officer & Co-owner of GiftCard Partners
Of course from there we'll post to LinkedIn & Twitter