UBS fined $1.5 billion in growing Libor scandal

By Katharina Bart and Tom Miles ZURICH | Wed Dec 19, 2012 7:17am EST (Reuters) - Swiss bank UBS admitted fraud and accepted a $1.5 billion fine on Wednesday for its role in manipulating global benchmark interest rates. Dozens of UBS staff rigged the Libor rate, which is used to price trillions of dollars worth of loans, in collusion with brokers and traders at other banks, according to an investigation by authorities in multiple countries. The...

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Maya apocalypse and Star Wars collide in Guatemalan temple

(Reuters) - At the center of the rebel base where Luke Skywalker took off to destroy the Death Star and save his people from the clutches of Darth Vader, Guatemala is preparing for another momentous event: the end of an age for the Maya. Deep inside the Guatemalan rainforest stand the ruins of the Maya temples that George Lucas used to film the planet Yavin 4 in the movie "Star Wars," from where Skywalker and his sidekick Han Solo launched their...

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In modern scandal, an e-mail is forever

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent LONDON | Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:04am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - When ousted Barclays CEO Bob Diamond says he felt "physically ill" reading e-mails of his traders crowing over interest rate manipulation, he is almost certainly telling the truth. The veteran banker says it was the first he knew that employees had worked to artificially inflate the London interbank rate LIBOR. Whatever the reality, he must have realized that the saved messages - with employees glorying in their activities and promising each...

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This Rotten Week: Predicting Jack Reacher, This is 40, And More Reviews

After weeks of skating by with one movie here, two there, the studios saw fit to dump a full on smorgasbord on us all at once. No time or words to spare. We’ve got Jack Reacher, guilt trips, manhunts, mid-life crises, and acrobats. Note: Won’t be doing Monsters, Inc (3D) because Rotten Tomatoes combines its reviews with the original making a prediction moot. Instead, replacing it with Zero Dark Thirty in a slippery slope effort to hit on limited...

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Zero Dark Thirty

The scene you may be expecting from Zero Dark Thirty comes at the very end of the nearly three-hour film, as director Kathryn Bigelow precisely recreated the raid on the house in Pakistan that led to the Navy SEAL team assassinating Osama bin Laden. It's a spectacularly tense and realistic scene, full of the same adrenaline you remember from Bigelow's Point Break and The Hurt Locker, and suffused with both films' sense of male camaraderie and...

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Rise of the Guardians

Rise of the Guardians Production year: 2012 Cast: Alec Baldwin, Chris Pine , Isla Fisher, Jude Law Just to confirm that the noughties' golden age of animation is behind us, here's a bland, underpowered, humourless feature from DreamWorks. Rise of the Guardians is about an Avengers-style grouping of all the mythic heroes in your childish imagination: there's Santa Claus, voiced with a Russian accent by Alec Baldwin; the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman);...

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The War Z: Murder of the Fittest

In The War Z's alternate version of history, Colorado is a cold, lonely place where the dead rise from their graves and seek out the last remnants of survivors to snack on. The droves of zombies congregating in the towns and cities nestled in this bucolic patch of countryside are deadly indeed in large numbers, but they're not what concerns me the most. It's those that are still breathing you really have watch out for. Spawning in this zombie apocalypse...

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Symantec Norton Internet Security 2013 review

Probably the best-known Windows internet-security (IS) suite in the world (although AVG may come close), Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2013 offers anti-virus, firewall, website/online banking protection and parental control. Internet Security doesn't include PC tuneup or online backup; for those elements you need to look for Norton 360. Symantec boldly claims 'Our exclusive reputation and behaviour antivirus technology are so advanced that...

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TGS: Metal Gear Rising Is Insane, Intelligent, Awesome

Each time we see Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Platinum Games has a point to prove. At E3, the developer reassured us the slicing mechanic was a viable form of ferocious tactics and not just a parlor trick. Trailers and messaging from the developer since then communicated that Rising was very much a Platinum Games joint, with the signature wacky comedy and badass presentation present in spades. Revengeance always seemed to be missing that...

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Movie Review: "The Hobbit"

By Stupid Celebrities, Mon, December 10, 2012 ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey‘ is a prequel to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy and the latest movie reviewed by Stupid Celebrities. Peter Jackson returns as the director. It starts off really slow and a tad on the boring side. You’re going to have to fight to stay awake for the first quarter of the film! I had to nudge my tween niece to wake her up! Needless to say, it’s more for adults than...

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