Subaru of America, a unit of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd, is recalling 660,238 Outback, Legacy, Impreza and Forester vehicles registered in cold-weather U.S. states because of possible corrosion of brake lines, safety regulators said on Thursday.

The 2009 Subaru Forester is introduced at the North American International Auto Show Sunday, Jan. 13, 2008 in Detroit.

Brake line corrosion could cause leaking of brake fluid and make the brakes less effective, increasing the risk of a crash, according to a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Affected vehicles are the 2009-2013 Forester, the 2008-2011 Impreza and the 2008-2014 Impreza WRX/STI, the 2005-2009 Outback and the 2005-2009 Legacy, the NHTSA said.

Subaru was not immediately available to comment on the recall or say if vehicles are being recalled outside the United States.

There was no mention of any crashes, injuries or deaths related to the problem on the NHTSA website.

The floor of the New York Stock Exchange July 1, 2014 in New York City.

The Dow industrials broke above the 17,000 milestone on Thursday and the S&P 500 came within 1 percent of piercing through 2,000 after the U.S. unemployment rate fell to its lowest in almost six years and the American economy created many more jobs than forecast.

The U.S. economy created 288,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate declined to 6.1 percent, the lowest since September 2008.

The data confirmed expectations that the economy bounced back in the second quarter after a dismal start to the year, and will likely spark talk about the need for the Federal Reserve to normalize monetary policy sooner rather than later.

With the Dow at 17,000, Main Street is expected to take a closer look at stocks.

"It may give people pause to think what could go wrong. I wouldn't be anything more than vigilant," said John Manley, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management in New York.

"This market is driven by fundamentals; 17,000 is a psychological thing, probably not much more."

The Dow is however underperforming other major indexes so far this year. Blue chips are up 2.8 percent year to date, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq have gained more than 7 percent each.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI rose 69.19 points or 0.41 percent, to 17,045.43, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 6.12 points or 0.31 percent, to 1,980.74 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 11.81 points or 0.26 percent, to 4,469.55.

The closing bell will ring at 1 p.m. (1700 GMT) and U.S. markets will be closed Friday for the Independence Day holiday.

Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) denied planning a bid for U.S. truck maker Paccar (PCAR.O) after analysts published comments in a research note from a senior executive of German rival Daimler (DAIGn.DE) saying he had heard of such a plan. Paccar shares were up 5.8 percent at $67.47.

Lululemon (LULU.O) shares rose 3.9 percent to $43 as founder Dennis Wilson's advisers have been talking to private equity firms about a possible buyout, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Regado Biosciences (RGDO.O) shares fell 57.1 percent to $2.90 after the Data Safety Monitoring Board started an unplanned review of data from a trial and the company said patient enrollment has been paused until the DSMB returns with recommendations.

Activist hedge fund Jana Partners LLC reported a 9.9 percent stake in PetSmart (PETM.O) and said it planned to ask the company to explore a sale, sending shares of the pet products retailer up 12.5 percent to $67.27.

I don’t know about you, but I love hearing the kind of stories where an underdog in the business world has managed to take on the big wigs in a relentless pursuit for the #1 position and they prevailed through a strong belief and sheer determination.


These great examples give us all hope that we can start your own business and make something truly and wonderfully awesome if we persist. That “it’s not about the size of the dog in the fight it’s the size of the fight in the dog”.

Well this great SlideShare that Firmex sent our way was created to share the stories of those who triumphed through the “David & Goliath” style scenario on their come up to success.

Look here

T-Mobile USA knowingly made hundreds of millions off its customers in bogus charges, a federal regulator alleged Tuesday in a complaint likely to damage the reputation of a household name in wireless communications.

Customers look at mobile devices inside a T-Mobile store, a division of Deutsche Telekom AG, in Budapest, Hungary, on Tuesday, April 24, 2012.

In its complaint filed in federal court, the Federal Trade Commission claimed that T-Mobile billed consumers for subscriptions to premium text services such as $10-per-month horoscopes that were never authorized by the account holder. The FTC alleges that T-Mobile collected as much as 40 percent of the charges, even after being alerted by other customers that the subscriptions were scams.

"It's wrong for a company like T-Mobile to profit from scams against its customers when there were clear warning signs the charges it was imposing were fraudulent," said FTC Chair Edith Ramirez. "The FTC's goal is to ensure that T-Mobile repays all its customers for these crammed charges."

The practice is often referred to as "cramming": businesses stuff a customer's bill with bogus charges associated with a third party. In this case, the FTC says T-Mobile should have realized that many of these premium text services were scams because of the high rate of customer complaints. But while as many as 40 percent of customers demanded refunds, others didn't notice the charges.

Headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, T-Mobile USA, Inc., is a publicly traded company. According to its website, Deutsche Telekom AG maintains a 67 percent ownership in the company's common stock.

Forty days after extracting a guilty plea and $2.6 billion in penalties from Credit Suisse, the Department of Justice has secured far bigger concessions from BNP Paribas .

Based on a settlement yesterday with state and federal authorities, the French banking giant agreed to pay out $8.97 billion in penalties and pleaded guilty to illicitly transferring funds on behalf Sudan, Iran, and Cuba, all of which faced economic sanctions. In a corresponding deal with New York’s Department of Financial Services, the bank also agreed to suspend U.S. dollar clearing operations through its New York branch for one year on various business lines.

Since 2008, critics of the financial sector and the government officials empowered to oversee the industry have complained of a dearth of meaningful punishments. Some of these complaints reside with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which outside of limited exceptions like Credit Suisse, has largely avoided requiring companies like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to admit to any wrongdoing in settlements with the agency.

Law enforcement officials have also faced criticism for failing to punish the financial sector and the executives responsible for corporate crimes with any meaningful penalties. In May, Credit Suisse became an outlier in pleading guilty to helping customers evade taxes. In settling with the Department of Justice, it also agreed to pay out $2.6 billion in penalties. The guilty plea served as a defining moment for an industry that had avoided acknowledgements of guilt for decades. Yet, other than soiling Credit Suisse’s reputation, the settlement did little to hurt its business. Or as its CEO Brady Dougan put it on the day of its mea culpa, the penalties will have no “material impact on its operational or business capabilities.” The deal secured the government a big trophy but did not necessarily have a broader impact on the financial sector.

As I wrote at the time, for the settlement to have any deterrence value, it must sting. Certainly, the government should look to avoid the kind of draconian punishments that destroyed Arthur Andersen a decade ago. But its penalties must cost a company some business, perhaps forcing it to shed a division or drop a lucrative practice for some time. Otherwise, it will serve largely as a moral victory and fail to fulfill one of the major goals of law enforcement: deterrence.

The conventional wisdom in the white collar crime setting is that short prison sentences are effective in deterring corporate executives. Judge Jed Rakoff said as much in sentencing Rajat Gupta, a former Procter & Gamble PG +0.57% director, to a two-year prison term for his role in an insider trading conspiracy involving Goldman Sachs. Yet, seemingly astronomical monetary penalties ranging into the billions have done little to deter corporations.

Under these metrics, if the Credit Suisse settlement was a bloop single, the government seems to have hit a double this time around. Not only was the dollar amount significantly higher, the key to the settlement may be the portion with the New York banking regulator barring BNP from fulfilling buy and sell orders and providing clearing services. These restrictions will make it more difficult to serve its international clients, particularly within the oil and gas industry. Yet, the limitation is likely to have little impact on BNP’s earnings and it’s unclear whether many major clients will drop the bank.

Of all the civil and criminal charges brought against corporations in the past few years, the BNP settlement is the most punitive. But will it be enough to deter Wall Street? It’s difficult to predict at this point. The stock market, often a good barometer of a company’s wherewithal, also sent out a murky message. BNP’s stock has tumbled about 15% since early April; yesterday, as news of the settlement became widespread, it edged up a quarter percentage.