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The Federal Reserve liquidity coverage ratio proposal, approved unanimously at a meeting in Washington, goes further than the Basel III measure adopted in January and calls for earlier implementation than the EU.

The US plan, most stringent for the biggest banks, is looking at implementation by 2017 – two years ahead of Basel’s deadline. “The proposed rule would, for the first time in the United States, put in place a quantitative liquidity requirement that would foster a more resilient and safer financial system,” Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said before the vote.

The proposal would require setting aside about $2 trillion (€1.44tn), and the Fed estimates that US banks are currently $200bn (€144bn) short.

Yu’s comments, made in a speech at a forum to promote relations with Taiwan, were reported by the official Xinhua News Agency on Oct. 26. Yu is ranked fourth in the seven-strong Politburo Standing Committee headed by party chief and President Xi Jinping.

Premier Li Keqiang has pledged to cut the state’s role in the economy, change the financial and fiscal systems, and overhaul land and household registration rules to sustain growth. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News this month said policies flowing from the meeting, called the third plenum, will reduce the odds of a severe slowdown and help China become a high-income country by 2030.

The meeting “will focus on studying comprehensive and deep reform,” Yu was quoted as saying in Xinhua’s report. “The depth and strength of the reforms will be unprecedented and will promote profound changes in every area of the economy and society.” The report didn’t refer to any policies or measures.

The interior ministry said in a statement that national power company equipment, six gas stations and a convenience store were targeted in 11 towns in the state of Michoacan, but that nobody was hurt .

The statement did not identify the assailants, and interior ministry spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said authorities were investigation the attacks.

But a government official told AFP that authorities suspect that the Knights Templar drug cartel launched the assault to send a message to the population and self-defense forces that have formed in the state.

The attack on the power grid came one day after vigilante groups marched in the town of Apatzingan, a Knights Templar bastion, in a protest that left one person injured.

The cartel accuses the self-defense forces of being backed by their rivals, the Jalisco New Generation cartel.

“I think it’s an issue between rival gangs, the Knights Templar and the Jalisco cartel,” the source said on condition of anonymity. “It’s a territorial dispute.”

The attacks on the power grid were a “sanction against the people,” the official said. “More than revenge, it was a message that they won’t allow people to mess with them.”

The federal government deployed thousands of troops to Michoacan in May to bring peace to the state after months of cartel violence that prompted several towns to take up arms.

Residents of Michoacan say they formed vigilante groups to counter the wave of extorsion, kidnappings and murders perpetrated by the purportedly religious Knights Templar cartel.

He also persuaded regulators to eliminate a withholding tax on profits that corporations move out of the country — while separately advising his cousin who was finance minister.

…

O’Rourke often speaks loudly and excitedly, gesturing with his hands, yet is careful not to let disagreements turn into arguments. He said the finger-pointing at Ireland and at his profession is misdirected, and politicians around the world complaining about tax avoidance have only themselves to blame.

In granting class-action status to the suit Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose cited what she termed “considerable, compelling common proof” that the Silicon Valley companies engaged in antitrust behavior by agreeing not to try to lure away each others’ employees.

Koh’s decision makes it much easier for the workers to win compensation — potentially tens of millions of dollars — because without class-action status, each of them would have to file costly lawsuits on their own. The ruling also is likely to put pressure on the companies to reach a financial settlement with the workers, as three other companies — Pixar, Lucasfilm and Intuit (INTU) — did in July, said Stephen Hirschfeld, CEO of the Employment Law Alliance, a network of labor and employment lawyers.

You’d be wrong. Many billions of dollars’ worth of wrong.

A few years ago, scientists at the Thousand Oaks biotech firm Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology.

The idea was to make sure that research on which Amgen was spending millions of development dollars still held up. They figured that a few of the studies would fail the test — that the original results couldn’t be reproduced because the findings were especially novel or described fresh therapeutic approaches.

But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid.

“Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research,” observed C. Glenn Begley, then Amgen’s head of global cancer research, “this was a shocking result.”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t unique. A group at Bayer HealthCare in Germany similarly found that only 25% of published papers on which it was basing R&D projects could be validated, suggesting that projects in which the firm had sunk huge resources should be abandoned. Whole fields of research, including some in which patients were already participating in clinical trials, are based on science that hasn’t been, and possibly can’t be, validated.

“The thing that should scare people is that so many of these important published studies turn out to be wrong when they’re investigated further,” says Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Economist recently estimated spending on biomedical R&D in industrialized countries at $59 billion a year. That’s how much could be at risk from faulty fundamental research.

Eisen says the more important flaw in the publication model is that the drive to land a paper in a top journal — Nature and Science lead the list — encourages researchers to hype their results, especially in the life sciences. Peer review, in which a paper is checked out by eminent scientists before publication, isn’t a safeguard. Eisen says the unpaid reviewers seldom have the time or inclination to examine a study enough to unearth errors or flaws.

The school, called 42, was founded by a telecom magnate who says the French education system is failing young people. His aim is to reduce France’s shortage in computer programmers while giving those who’ve fallen by the wayside a new chance.

In the hallways of 42, suitcases and sleeping bags are piled, and people are stretched out on mattresses in some of the corners. There are showers and dozens of colorful bath towels.

Living here for the next month are some of the 4,000 potential students who already made the first cut by passing cognitive skill tests online.

Now they have to clear another hurdle. They’re thrown together and challenged with computer problems for 15 hours a day. Only 800 students will get a place, says 42’s director, Nicolas Sadirac.

A Demand For Thinkers From Any Class

“It’s very, very intensive,” Sadirac says. “It’s a kind of selection, but [for] the long term. So we don’t just do an examination. We spend four weeks choosing each student.”

The only criteria for applying is to be between the ages of 18 and 30. Applicants don’t need money, or a particular level of academic achievement. A third don’t even have high school diplomas.

Sadirac says they’re not looking for how much students know, but how they think. One of the school’s main goals is to unearth talent in poor areas, where kids don’t fit into the traditional French academic mold.

Youth unemployment in France is at a 14-year high. At the same time, French companies cannot find enough IT specialists, and thousands of young computer enthusiasts can’t get training. That prompted 42’s founder Xavier Niel to invest $90 million of his own money in the school.

Niel, the creator of France’s third largest telecommunications company, Free, says the social elevator in France is broken.