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JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, has said it lost $2 billion over the past six weeks in a trading portfolio supposedly designed to hedge against risks the company takes with its own money.

The company’s stock plunged almost 7 per cent in after-hours trading after the loss was announced. Other bank stocks, including Citigroup and Bank of America, suffered heavy losses as well.

“The portfolio has proved to be riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than we thought,” CEO Jamie Dimon told reporters. “There were many errors, sloppiness and bad judgment.”

Sounds like bonuses all round then.

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Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires, a series of psychology studies demonstrates.

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GINGRICH: Sure, there should be very decisive reforms. I think, in retrospect, repealing the Glass-Steagall Act was probably a mistake. We should probably reestablish dividing up the big banks into a banking function and an investment function and separating them out again.

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[Convicted lobbyist Jack] Abramoff’s transgressions led to a series of reform bills. So Stahl asked Abramoff directly: “Could you do the same thing today?” Abramoff didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah,” he said. “The system hasn’t been cleaned up at all.”

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A new report looking into online music consumption habits shows that since 2009 the number of people who pirate music has dropped by 25 percent in Sweden. The sharp decrease coincides with a massive interest for the music streaming service Spotify. One of the main reasons why people switch to legal services is the wider range of material they can find there.

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The American League of Lobbyists on Monday called for the withdrawal of a new ethics regulation that would prohibit all government employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists.

Wait, let me get my surprised face…

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For more than a decade, California and other states have kept their newest teen drivers on a tight leash, restricting the hours when they can get behind the wheel and whom they can bring along as passengers. Public officials were confident that their get-tough policies were saving lives.

Now, though, a nationwide analysis of crash data suggests that the restrictions may have backfired: While the number of fatal crashes among 16- and 17-year-old drivers has fallen, deadly accidents among 18-to-19-year-olds have risen by an almost equal amount. In effect, experts say, the programs that dole out driving privileges in stages, however well-intentioned, have merely shifted the ranks of inexperienced drivers from younger to older teens.

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When poor people are given medical insurance, they not only find regular doctors and see doctors more often but they also feel better, are less depressed and are better able to maintain financial stability, according to a new, large-scale study that provides the first rigorously controlled assessment of the impact of Medicaid.

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Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.

This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash

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"I’m pretty sure he didn’t like his family back then," Cameron said.

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South Korean giant Samsung Electronics on Friday admitted it faced a tough challenge to compete with Apple’s new slimmer and cheaper iPad, saying "inadequate" parts had to be improved.

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Samsung’s original seven-inch screen Galaxy Tab was priced at nearly $900 if bought without a two-year contract from mobile operators, while the cheapest iPad 2 costs $499.

Samsung has not announced pricing for its new 10.1-inch tablet.

“The 10-inch (tablet) was to be priced higher than the seven-inch but we will have to think that over,” Lee told Yonhap.

update: and before I get accused of copying gruber again, please compare timestamps.

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When hackers crash their systems while developing viruses, the code is often sent directly to Microsoft, according to one of its senior security architects, Rocky Heckman.

When the hacker’s system crashes in Windows, as with all typical Windows crashes, Heckman said the user would be prompted to send the error details — including the malicious code — to Microsoft. The funny thing is that many say yes, according to Heckman.

"People have sent us their virus code when they’re trying to develop their virus and they keep crashing their systems," Heckman said. "It’s amazing how much stuff we get."

And I wonder how much code they get from regular developers, and what they do with it…

Heckman said there were two reasons why the top hacking methods of cross-site scripting and SQL injection had not changed in the past six years.

“One, it tells me that the bad guys go with what they know, and two, it says the developers aren’t listening,” he said.

Heckman said that developers should consider all data input by a user as harmful until proven otherwise.

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Scientists are reporting early signs that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is altering the marine food web by killing or tainting some creatures and spurring the growth of others more suited to a fouled environment.

Near the spill site, researchers have documented a massive die-off of pyrosomes — cucumber-shaped, gelatinous organisms fed on by endangered sea turtles.

Along the coast, droplets of oil are being found inside the shells of young crabs that are a mainstay in the diet of fish, turtles and shorebirds.

And at the base of the food web, tiny organisms that consume oil and gas are proliferating.

If such impacts continue, the scientists warn of a grim reshuffling of sealife that could over time cascade through the ecosystem and imperil the region’s multibillion-dollar fishing industry.