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From wsj.com By ANDREA COOMBES

For consumers drowning in high-rate credit-card debt, balance transfers — those “0% for 12 months!” offers — are often important, if temporary, lifelines. For anyone else with credit-card debt, they’re a useful way to keep interest-rate payments low.

But as credit-card issuers themselves flail in stormier economic seas, some are making such offers more restrictive and expensive. That means consumers must make sure that transferring their debt makes prudent financial sense.

Fees have changed. Before, a balance-transfer fee was typically 3% of the amount transferred — up to a maximum of about $50 or $75, depending on the offer. These days, the fee is still usually 3%, but the cap is gone. The more you transfer, the more you pay. For instance, transferring a $5,000 balance is likely to cost you $150 today, twice as much as in past years.

Another change: Though some credit-card issuers still offer 0% balance-transfer rates for 12 months or more, others are hiking the introductory interest rate and shortening the length of time it’s offered. “They used to be almost always 12 months. Now they can be as short as three months,” says Bill Hardekopf, chief executive of LowCards.com in Birmingham, Ala. Read the rest of this entry »

By April Witt and David S. Fallis
Washington Post Staff Writers

The D.C. charter school credit enhancement committee has operated largely out of public view for most of its eight years of existence.

Yet it has awarded $47 million in taxpayer loans and guarantees to more than 30 schools or their developers. That generous funding has been a decisive factor in the District’s charter school system’s becoming one of the largest in the nation.

The committee’s generosity has also benefited banks and private companies that have business ties to committee members, including the current chairman, Barbara “Bobbie” Hart, public records show.

Committee members or their employers have had financial ties to about a third of the applicants or projects that the committee has voted to fund with public money. Since Hart joined the committee in 2006, the panel has voted repeatedly to award taxpayer funds to charter schools or developers with ties to Adams National Bank, where Hart is a vice president. Hart has recused herself from all but two votes involving applicants that had given her loan business or were about to, records show. She declined to comment. Read the rest of this entry »

New Rules Would Ban Retroactive Rate Hikes

By Nancy Trejos? Washington Post Staff Writer

The Federal Reserve on Thursday will vote on sweeping reform of the credit card industry that would ban practices such as retroactively increasing interest rates at will and charging late fees when consumers are not given a reasonable amount of time to make payments.

The Fed, which has been considering the proposed changes since May, declined this week to release details of the final draft regulations. But banking officials and consumer advocates said that they do not expect substantial changes before the vote, especially since members of Congress have pressured the Fed not to water down the rules. Read the rest of this entry »

In a move that makes the iPhone 3G more accessible, users can now buy it online activate it at home via iTunes.

From InformationWeek.com Dec 11, 2008 By Marin Perez

AT&T (NYSE: T) and Apple are bringing in-home activation for the iPhone 3G, making the popular handset easier to get without having to go to the store.

The first-generation iPhone could be purchased in a store or online and the user could active the phone at home through iTunes. The original version was sold unsubsidized, and many users would end up unlocking the touch-screen smartphone.

Additionally, AT&T and Apple had a monthly revenue-sharing deal for the original iPhone, which is an uncommon practice in the mobile industry. For the iPhone 3G, AT&T decided it would drop the revenue sharing, and resell the handset to customers at a subsidy. Read the rest of this entry »

Dec 12, 2008 4:19 PM, MD&D News Staff

Qualcomm has announced a PC alternative designed to make high-speed Internet access more widely available and affordable in emerging markets. The Kayak PC alternative leverages the widespread availability of 3G wireless broadband to bring Internet connectivity to markets where wired Internet access has often been difficult to access or unaffordable. According to Qualcomm, Kayak fills the niche between desktop PCs, which normally require landlines or separate accessories for connectivity, and Internet-capable wireless devices.

Kayak’s reference design and recommended software specifications will be available to device manufacturers. The reference design uses Qualcomm’s dual-core Mobile Station Modem MSM7xxx-series chipsets to provide computing and connectivity. Devices based on the reference design will offer a full-featured Web 2.0-capable browser from Opera Software than can perform at desktop resolutions, as well as access via the browser to Web 2.0 productivity applications. Read the rest of this entry »

Novatel’s new MiFi — gets smaller, offers storage
10:28AM Saturday Dec 13 2008 by Karl Bode

Portable 3G to Wi-Fi routers have been around for a while, allowing you to share your 3G connection while on the move — assuming you don’t bump into your 3G carrier’s monthly cap.

The devices are certainly getting smaller and sexier — Novatel’s MiFi getting oodles of press this week for being quite the looker. The device, set to be released early next year for less than $200, offers HSDPA and EVDO to Wi-Fi bridging with a battery that can handle up to 4 hours of use (and 40 hours of standby). Read the rest of this entry »

UNION-TRIBUNE
7:09 a.m. December 12, 2008

NORTH PARK: A charity that helps Latinos with HIV/AIDS will host a Christmas celebration at 6 p.m. today in North Park.

The event, by Bienestar – Spanish for well-being – will include a free dinner, a drag queen fashion show and a vigil for those affected by HIV. It will be held at the agency’s offices, 3020 North Park Way. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is providing the funding. Read the rest of this entry »

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Dec. 9 (HealthDay News) — By 2010, cancer will be the leading killer in the world, surpassing heart disease, causing more deaths than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Unless new treatments are found, there could be 27 million people with cancer by 2030, and 17 million cancer deaths annually. And, there could be 75 million people living with cancer within five years after diagnosis, according to a new report, 2008 World Cancer Report, released Tuesday by the World Health Organization.

“The burden of cancer is shifting from developed countries to developing nations,” Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said during a teleconference. “And with a growing and aging population, we must take steps to address this problem now.” Read the rest of this entry »

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2008) — Findings from a new study have prompted Mayo Clinic researchers to recommend CYP2D6 gene testing for postmenopausal women about to begin tamoxifen therapy. This data confirms that women with an inherited deficiency in the CYP2D6 gene, which is important for the metabolism of tamoxifen, have a nearly fourfold higher risk of early breast cancer recurrence compared to women who have not inherited the deficiency.

The research findings, announced jointly by investigators from Mayo Clinic and the Austrian Breast and Colorectal Cancer Study Group (ABCSG) confirmed results from a previous study conducted by Mayo Clinic. The latest findings will be presented December 13 at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center-American Association for Cancer Research (CTRC-AACR) 31st annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Read the rest of this entry »

New Tool Looks for Gene Variations linked to Increased Risk
By Charlene Laino
WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD

Dec. 12, 2008 (San Antonio) – A new genetic test is much better at predicting breast cancer risk than the standard model, researchers report.

The new test, known as OncoVue, looks at variations in 19 genes associated with breast cancer risk, says Kathie Dalessandri, MD, a breast cancer researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

Currently, doctors use the Gail model to determine a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer. It evaluates five personal and family predictors of breast cancer risk — age, age at first period, number of breast biopsies performed, age at the birth of first child, and number of immediate relatives who have had breast cancer. Read the rest of this entry »