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With ads, FINRA hopes BrokerCheck becomes go-to site, like Yelp

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With a new ad campaign, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority hopes its BrokerCheck website will become a customer’s first stop, like Yelp for diners or Angie’s List for home owners, before they invest with a financial adviser. The Wall Street watchdog, known as FINRA, launched the campaign Monday with 15-second commercials depicting people making big decisions without doing their homework, in a bid to promote its years-old website that provides free information about brokers’ employment history, credentials and customer complaints.

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China’s ‘Internet police’ open a window on Web censorship

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The branch of China's police in charge of censoring “illegal and harmful” online information will make its efforts more visible to the public from Monday with the launch of their own social media accounts, the Ministry of Public Security said. The Chinese government aggressively censors the Internet, blocking many sites it deems could challenge the rule of the Communist Party or threaten stability, including popular Western sites like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, as well as Google Inc's main search engine and Gmail service

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Obama says ‘handful of senators’ blocking surveillance reforms

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By Patricia Zengerle and Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama warned on Friday that surveillance powers used to prevent attacks on Americans could lapse at midnight on Sunday unless “a handful of senators” stop standing in the way of reform legislation.

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Silk Road website creator gets life term for drug plot

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By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) – The accused mastermind behind the Silk Road underground website was sentenced on Friday to life in prison for orchestrating a scheme that enabled more than $200 million of anonymous online drug sales using the digital currency bitcoin. Ross Ulbricht, 31, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan after a federal jury in February found him guilty of charges including distributing drugs through the Internet and conspiring to commit computer hacking and money laundering

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Obama says ‘handful of senators’ blocking U.S. surveillance reforms

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By Patricia Zengerle and Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama warned on Friday that surveillance powers used to prevent attacks on Americans could lapse at midnight on Sunday unless “a handful of senators” stop standing in the way of reform legislation. Obama said he had told Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other senators that he expects them to act swiftly on a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would renew certain powers and reform the bulk collection of telephone data

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Silk Road website creator gets life in prison for drug plot

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – The accused mastermind behind the underground website Silk Road was sentenced on Friday to life in prison for orchestrating a scheme that enabled more than $200 million of anonymous online drug sales using the digital currency bitcoin.

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Women in photos won’t press charges in Penn State frat case, police say

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By David DeKok HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) – None of the women in nude photographs posted on a Facebook page for a now-suspended Penn State fraternity is cooperating with investigators, police said on Friday, frustrating efforts to bring charges against the fraternity’s members. Earlier this week, Pennsylvania State University suspended the school’s Kappa Delta Rho chapter for three years after discovering a private Facebook page that included photos of female students who were undressed, and in some cases, apparently unconscious or sleeping.

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Virtual reality film aims to raise funds by giving Nepal quake experience

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By Nita Bhalla NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A virtual reality film aims to help raise funds for survivors of last month’s earthquake in Nepal by giving viewers a first-hand experience of the disaster’s aftermath, the director said on Friday. Los Angeles-based company RYOT – which produces news stories for audiences to act on – shot the footage in the days following the 7.8 magnitude quake which struck the impoverished nation on April 25, killing more than 8,000 people.

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